How the Indian freedom struggle inspired a future Sri Lankan president

In the late 1920s, when the British Empire’s authority seemed almost unchallenged in what was then called Ceylon, the colonial authorities were alerted about an act of defiance challenging their rule: a student of the Ceylon Law College had hung a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi in the main parlour.

That rebel, Junius Richard Jayawardene, was no ordinary student. The son of a Colombo lawyer, the young man would win a gold medal for his oratory skills and a special prize for his legal research, before going on decades later to become the president of Sri Lanka.

“This sensational episode gained me much publicity at that time, for it amounted to a challenge thrown at the British Raj,” Jayawardene wrote in his biography Men and Memories.

Although he began practising law after his graduation, Jayawardene found himself increasingly attracted to politics and the Indian independence movement.

“The masses were either apolitical or showed total indifference to national problems,” he said about Ceylon of the 1920s and ’30s. “But in the neighbouring subcontinent of India, a mass movement was in full swing. Mahatma Gandhi, the frail ascetic, was the general who planned the Swaraj Movement, and his technique of Satyagraha or the power of truth was the basis of the Indian freedom struggle. I was much impressed by the role played by Pandit Nehru for whom I developed a great affection.”

Jayawardene would get a chance to meet both Gandhi and Nehru when he went to India for sessions of the Indian National Congress, which made sure to invite delegates from Ceylon and Burma as well.

Buddha’s footsteps

A trip to Ramgarh in 1940 for the 53rd session of the Congress left a deep impression on Jayawardene’s mind.

“It was a pretty countryside that we passed through on our way, for over a hundred miles to the west of Calcutta,” he wrote. “Ramgarh itself is very similar to Diyatalwa, undulating valleys, large plains and mountain streams abounding.”

Rajendra Prasad’s words that “every particle of dust” was “sanctified by the touch of the feet of Gautama, the Buddha” really resonated with Jayawardene. The countryside of Bihar, Jayawardene said, had a history that was “unequalled in the world” since the founders of both Buddhism and Jainism spent large portions of their life there.

As a 34-year-old with a long political career ahead of him, Jayawardene observed the key figures of the Indian freedom struggle. Nehru, he said, was “quick of temper” and Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan “over six feet in height”.

From his time in Ramgarh, Jayawardene took away some astute learnings. “Two facts were clear,” he said. “First, India was united in her demand to be free and she wanted her freedom outside the British Commonwealth of Nations. Secondly, Mahatma Gandhi was still the unquestioned leader of India. There was no opposition to his leadership.”

He noted that Subash Chandra Bose had organised a counter-show with his “anti-compromise” and “Forward Bloc” ideals. “These meetings were attended by the Kisan (peasant) organisations and had the support of over a lakh of people,” he wrote. “The opposition was not, however, to Gandhi’s leadership; it was to his refusal to begin the fight.”

He said Ceylon could learn many things from the way Indian politicians conducted themselves in their struggle against the British, especially the absence of racial or personal feelings.

“No man or woman we met, be he/she leader or the follower, talked except in terms of ideals of social and economic construction, of a new world order based not on exploitation, but according to a planned economy,” he wrote. “In the field of politics, the masses were trained to think not in terms of race or personalities, but in terms of social equality, equal opportunity for all and anti-imperialism.”

The Ramgarh session marked the beginning of a decades-long friendship between Nehru and Jayawardene. Delegates from Ceylon and Burma were invited to stay with Nehru in Allahabad, an invitation that the Sri Lankan politician gladly accepted.

“We were treated with the greatest kindness and hospitality, as if we were old friends,” Jayawardene wrote. “Mrs Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, as Nehru’s sister as the hostess, used to sit down for morning breakfast with us to a typical Western breakfast with bacon and eggs, toast and marmalade.The host presided and sat with us.”

Jayawardene treasured his brief stay in Allahabad. “We had long discussions with Pandit Nehru though we were far removed from his activities which covered almost 20 years of direct and indirect non-violent campaigns, to free India from foreign rule,” he said. Nehru’s role in the freedom movement was discussed as well.

Correspondence with Nehru

“Like all other youths of our generation throughout the British Empire, we hero-worshipped Jawaharlal Nehru and his leader, Mahatma Gandhi,” Jayawardene wrote. “The friendship formed thus enabled me to correspond with him.” The two regularly exchanged letters until Nehru’s incarceration.

Jayawardene released the correspondence in July 1971 after reading an appeal from Indira Gandhi to anyone possessing letters from her father to make them available to the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund.

The letters make for interesting reading.

In 1940, there was a genuine fear that Ceylon may be bartered away to a rival power by the British if they lost the war. This led people like Jayawardene to look at what can only be described as a political union between Ceylon and India.

“Some of us – the number is increasing – think that our future lies with India, and we are endeavouring to arrange for the sending of a representative deputation from Ceylon to meet the Indian leaders,” Jayawardene wrote in a letter dated July 20,1940. “Federation or closer union between a free India and a free Ceylon would certainly be a subject we wish discussed.”

In his reply, Nehru said, “It is too much to hope that a real World Federation of free nations will emerge out of this terrible conflict.” He suggested that various types of federations could exist with or without Britain and then added: “Personally I should like India to be closely associated in a future order with China, Burma and Ceylon, as well as other countries which fit in.”

Their correspondence exhibited a prodigy-mentor relationship. “The 21st session of our Congress party was held in December and it was modelled on the lines of the Indian Congress with Swadeshi exhibitions, open air mass meetings etc,” Jayawardene wrote in a May 1941 letter. “Our visit to Ramgarh enabled us to use many of the features we saw there.” The letter also spoke of the victory of the party in the Colombo municipal elections.

In response, Nehru wrote, “In the thoughts that fill my mind, Ceylon often recurs and the difficulties of the present day do not worry me that much. My good wishes to you and the people of Lanka.”

Although their correspondence stopped after Nehru’s arrest, the two would regularly meet after both countries attained independence. During his visits to Ceylon on occasions such as the Colombo Powers Conference, Nehru dined at Jayawardene’s posh Ward Place house.

Apart from his relationship with Nehru, Jayawardene was particularly proud of his interaction with Mahatma Gandhi in 1942 when he went to Bombay for the Congress Session where the Quit India movement was launched.

“At our request, he included Ceylon too in the resolution demanding freedom for Asiatic nations,” Jayawardene wrote. When he met Gandhi, the Mahatma said, “My love for Ceylon is even greater than my love for Burma.”

Jayawardene heaped praise on Gandhi: “In spite of the bitterness that had arisen as a result of this conflict between Britain and India, it was true that in the mind of India’s great leader there was no hate whatever towards his adversaries.”

After independence

A few months before Ceylon attained independence in 1948, Jayawardene was appointed the country’s minister of finance. Over the next few decades, he was either in government or in opposition.

The country was renamed Sri Lanka in 1972, and in 1977, he became prime minister. He then amended the constitution to make the presidency an executive post and served as the president from 1978 to 1989.

While he continued to express admiration for Gandhi and Nehru, his actions and inactions belied their ideals. His legacy was tainted by the way his government mishandled the island’s ethnic problem. It was under his watch that anti-Tamil pogroms took place in the country in 1977, 1981 and 1983, and a civil war broke out.

Jayawardene did develop a friendship with Rajiv Gandhi. In 1987, the two signed the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord, which was seen as a genuine effort to solve the ethnic problem and maintain the territorial integrity and unity of Sri Lanka.

While India’s interference in the island’s affairs and support of violent separatist groups like the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, created acrimony between the countries, Jayawardene maintained he was a follower of Gandhi and Nehru. In his autobiography, he wrote about how even at the time of signing the Indo-Lanka Accord, he thought of Nehru.

“I kept in mind throughout the words of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘If your enemy extends a hand, however dishonestly, you grab it. If there is good faith, you have responded. If not, then at least you have one of his hands immobilised,’” Jayawardene wrote.

JN Dixit, who as India’s High Commissioner to Sri Lanka held regular meetings with Jayawardene, praised him for his economic policies but had mixed feelings about his presidency and approach to the ethnic problem.

“Had Jayawardene genuinely structured a compromise with Tamil citizens of his country, instead of indulging in political ambiguities aimed at perpetuating Sinhalese domination of Sri Lankan politics, the country’s history would have been different and not as tragic as it is now,” Dixit wrote in his book Assignment Colombo.

Dixit had plenty of praise for Jayawardene, though. “He was the last generation of South and South Asian leaders who witnessed the emergence into independence of Asian and African countries,” Dixit wrote. “Sri Lanka in general and South Asia in particular are poorer with his passing from the scene.”

Dixit mentioned that Jayawardene took great pride in his relationship with India’s freedom fighters: “Jayawardene was deeply convinced that among all the leaders of the countries neighbouring India, he was the most knowledgeable about India.”

The Indian diplomat was always reminded by Jayawardene of his links with the Indian freedom struggle. “He had a photograph on his drawing room mantlepiece, where he appeared sitting on the dais between Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru,” Dixit wrote. “He invariably drew the attention of his important Indian visitors to this photograph in his Ward Place residence.”

It is clear from Jayawardene’s autobiography published in 1992 that he continued to have affection for India, despite the bad blood of the early 1980s. Dixit summed it up best: “I always felt that he had had an almost emotional feeling for India both in terms of the civilisational connections between India and Sri Lanka and his personal linkages with the freedom movement of India.”

JR Jayawardene died in 1996 of colon cancer, at the age of 90.

Ajay Kamalakaran is a writer, primarily based in Mumbai. His Twitter handle is @ajaykamalakaran.