How the JVP learned English with difficulty
If the JVP had introduced a English class in their five classes
S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike was called the ‘Silver Bell of Asia.’ He was a talented speaker at the Oxford Debating Society in England. He spoke English so eloquently. When he finished his Oxford education and came to Sri Lanka and started politics, there were politicians in Sri Lankan politics who had studied at Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard universities who could speak English as eloquently as he did. Bandaranaike was not a prominent figure among them. He realized that he had to do many difficult things to become the leader of the country.
Bandaranayke did not join the National Association of Elite Politicians but formed the Sinhala Maha Sabha to seize power and become the leader of the country through another means. He once told this story to Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.
‘How did you form a new party and seize power so quickly…?’ Lee Kuan Yew asked.
‘People have race, religion and caste embedded in their subconscious. I took it up by beating it up…’
That is how Bandaranaike answered his question, as Lee Kuan Yew said.
That is what Bandaranaike did. D.S. Senanayake and other elite politicians said that even if the nation is Sri Lankan, Sinhala and Tamil speaking, everyone should learn English.
Bandaranaike said that Sri Lanka belongs to the Sinhalese nation and that the language of Sri Lanka should be Sinhala only. By saying that, he sowed hatred against elite politicians who said that English speakers should learn English. Sinhala doctors pitted against English doctors. Workers pitted against businessmen. Menial workers pitted against English-speaking administrative officials. Farmers who did not know a word of English were pitted against English. All of these pitted against English-speaking western attire -wearing elite politicians and the upper class, and they used the 1956 election as a Shramadana to drive out the elite class. The racists called this the ‘breakdown of the Brahmin caste’.
Sri Lanka had developed until then because of the Tamil scholars of Colombo and Jaffna who had been educated in English and entered the administrative service. When Sinhala was made the official language, they left Sri Lanka and went to find jobs in Singapore and Malaysia. Singapore and Malaysia developed thanks to Bandaranaike’s Sinhala Only Act.
At the time when Bandaranaike was dismantling the Brahmin caste, a boy who had grown up in the slums of Kehelwatte was looking for a way to enter politics. His name was Ranasinghe Premadasa. He had started a social service movement called Sucharitha Vyapariya and was doing great social service. He was not someone who could speak English. But Bandaranaike’s politics failed to make him hate the English-speaking elite. What he did was learn to speak English properly so that he could interact with the elite.
‘When we passed in front of Sucharitha at that time, we could hear Premadasa banging on the cane table and teaching English to the children in the slums. He learned English by teaching English to the children…’
This is a story told by the monk of the Kehelwatte temple at that time.
When Premadasa became the Minister of Local Government, he was a minister who could handle the English language. When he became the Prime Minister, he was someone who could speak English fluently. He employed Tamil administrative officers who could speak English fluently in his office and ministry. Premadasa worked in English. He understood at a young age that English was necessary to become an MP, a minister, a Prime Minister, and a President in this country.
Bandaranaike was educated in English, came to Sri Lanka, learned Sinhala, and became the Prime Minister by showing that English was not necessary to become MPs, Prime Ministers, Presidents, or in the administrative service in Sri Lanka.
Bandaranaike came to power by sowing hatred against English. Premadasa came to power by learning English the hard way. While Bandaranaike’s crown prince studied at the University of London and took lessons from Shakespeare’s books and wielded swords in English in Parliament, Premadasa, who had taught English to children in the slums and learned English, debated side by side with him in English.
That’s what the collapse of the Brahmin caste is all about. It was not Bandaranaike who broke the Brahmin caste, but Premadasa.
Recently, a professor introduced the 2024 JVP election victory as a collapse of the Brahmin caste. The JVP did the same thing that Bandaranaike did in 1956. That is, sow hatred. Bandaranaike chose race and language to sow hatred. The JVP chose traditional politics to sow hatred. In that, they also ridiculed Ranil speaking in English alongside foreign heads of state, and Sajith Premadasa speaking Oxford and Cambridge English. They also ridiculed Sajith asking children if they knew Japanese. Learning Japanese is as important as learning English. As it is important for Sri Lankans to get job opportunities in Japan.
Dr. Gunadasa Amarasekara once said that the JVP is the children of 56. Looking at the way Minister Sunil Handunnetti speaks at the ‘World Economic Forum’, it is not the Brahmin caste that has collapsed in 56, but the country. It is not the Brahmin caste that has collapsed in 2024, but the country. If Premadasa, a small-class rascal who never went to university, thought that he needed to learn English to rule the country, it is a tragedy that the JVP leaders, who have been trying to rule the country since 1971, do not understand this. If the JVP had included English in the five classes and made it six classes, the JVP would never have come to power. The reason is that if that were the case, the JVP cadres who learned English would either go to big jobs in companies. Or they would go abroad.
