ABSTRACT
Although the anti-colonial struggles which led to independence in 1948 transformed the colony of Ceylon into an independent state and its subjects into citizens, the emergent post-colonial state was firmly based on mercantilist capital and a plantation economy. The main shift in this colonial state form emerged in 1956 with the launch of a ‘national’ closed economy, which also gave rise to Sinhala Buddhist nationalism. While the closed or ‘mixed’ economy extended the domain of the state by addressing urgent issues of poverty, unemployment and maldistribution it also changed the realm of representative politics. The expanding multi-party electoral system that began to emerge at this time – which encompassed mass parties, minority ethnic parties and working-class parties – also witnessed the incorporation of trade unions within the political system. The aim of this chapter is to explore both the emergence and reconstitution of ethno-nationalist tendencies within the labour movement in Sri Lanka, as well as recent counter-hegemonic tendencies to such developments. To do so it is first necessary to consider the rise of unions in the colonial
plantation regime and the dynamics of the anti-colonial struggle. The early trade unions (those active from 1893 to 1930) emerged among the urban working class under a ‘mercantilist Company state’ which incorporated not only Ceylon but the Indian sub-continent into the world capitalist economy (Jayawardena 1972; Chandavarkar 1998: 330).1 Although plantation workers were central to the British colonial economy, unions were restricted in the plantations until the granting of limited adult franchise in the early 1930s (Jayawardena 1972). In seeking to avoid charges of sedition, worker struggles in this early state merged with anti-colonial religious agitation against Christianity, which in addition to fostering a cultural renaissance among Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims also shaped constructions of nationhood (Jayawardena 1972: 33-34). Although diverse cultural identities were initially accommodated within the anti-colonial and labour movements, and while socialist and communist parties that emerged between the 1930s and 1950s articulated the class and internationalist dimensions of worker struggles, there were, however, instances of violence against ethnic minorities in this period.2
