Revisiting the Peradeniya Campus
and thoughts on a Sri Lankan dilemma
On the morning of 02 February, 1969, contingents of the Sri Lanka Army disembarked at the small Peradeniya University railway station with much fanfare for their forthcoming participation in the Sri Lanka Independence Day celebrations. They were to be housed in the university gymnasium. The government of Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake had decided that the annual Sri Lanka independence celebrations of 1969 would be held in Kandy and not in the capital city, Colombo. The Sri Lankan Army was small, with a total of around 12,000 personnel, and poorly equipped with antiquated World War 2 equipment. But it was high on ceremonial parades and spit and polish. The small army contingents had always been the main attraction of the annual Independence Day parades.
I was a major in the Sri Lanka Army Service Corps (Volunteers) or the SLASC(V) and was to lead the SLASC contingent. Having been a student at the Peradeniya campus a little over a decade ago, I looked forward to this visit with nostalgia. There were over a thousand students lining the roadway leading from the station: curious admirers, we thought. As we disembarked, the stentorian voices of sergeant-majors yelling at their troops to form up were being heard. The marching band of the Ceylon Light Infantry formed the head of the line and the drum-major struck the first note. Just then it started. Hails of rock stones were hurled at the troops by the now jeering students. One large stone hit the drum-major’s large drum, tearing its side with a gaping hole. Others fell on the soldiers bruising some of them. But the officers showed their grit, yelling at their troops, “Ignore the missiles. Form up to march forward in good order! Eyes front!”
Throughout the half hour march to the gymnasium, we were accompanied by wildly jeering students throwing whatever missiles they could pick up. Finally, we reached the safety of the gymnasium. The students did not cross the path leading to the entrance. They were not going to risk a direct physical encounter with the much tougher soldiers.
For most of the soldiers, mainly from poor families from rural areas of the country, Kandy, the picturesque capital of the last Sinhala kingdom, was a tourist attraction and a place of pilgrimage to the famed Temple of the Tooth. After the student attacks subsided and all seemed clear, small groups of soldiers in civilian dress went to visit Kandy. They had to return before 6.00 p.m. As these small groups or individuals returned, they were ambushed by large bands of students who savagely manhandled them and stripped them of their clothing. Soldiers were running back to the gymnasium in the nude with a hand covering their genitals. There was uproar in the gymnasium. Soldiers were screaming to go out and thrash the students. Major-General D.S. Attygalle, the Commander of the Army, had arrived and he sat on a chair at the entrance. He yelled out that no one was permitted to leave the gymnasium. He shouted at his men: “Damn it! You are soldiers and you must bear a beating. I cannot answer to the Prime Minister if you go out and maul the students.”
It was not an easy situation. One soldier came running naked saying that he was held to the ground while female students urinated on his face. There was an angry roar from the soldiers. Inside, we officers were doing our best to quell the revolt among our men who were shouting that they could not bear this outrage. However, General Attygalle’s strong personality prevailed. He himself could be as loud and nasty as any among us. That night, army trucks transported the troops out of the campus to the Gannoruwa School of Agriculture for the rest of our stay.
I had my own share of adventure. I had gone to Kandy with two of my fellow officers and was returning in the evening when we saw the mob of students once again gathered on the other side of the road opposite the gymnasium, screaming obscenities at the army. We had no choice but to get to our soldiers inside the gymnasium. So we boldly mingled with the students pretending to be part of them. Some of the students looked askance at my companions, who were much older than me, and challenged them: “You two fellows are too old to be students. Who are you?” One of them tactfully replied they were school teachers studying for the teacher’s diploma in the campus. But we had to get inside. After a while we saw a large SLASC truck approaching. The driver recognized us and drove the truck fast and made a screeching halt in front of us. “Now” I said and we jumped in front of the truck and raced to the other side behind its cover. The mob screamed in frustration.
It was rumoured that the night after the troops left the campus, a small band of soldiers dressed only in their underwear and carrying clubs, led by a young infantry officer, entered the halls of residence under cover of darkness and beat up the students who were asleep, forcing them to run away to the nearby hills, screaming out in fear. This was not verified. But soldiers usually do not tolerate a humiliation of their colleagues.
Eventually, the military show at the Independence Day parade in Kandy went off without a hitch (see the link to the British Pathe News channel film on this parade).
http://www.britishpathe.com/video/21st-independence-celebrations-in-ceylon/query/331420
Most people look forward nostalgically to a return to their alma mater. I graduated from the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya Campus, in 1958, with fond memories of that place where I had spent some of the happiest years of my life. I was elected President of Ramanathan Hall where I resided, and also of the Union Society, the apex student body. We had our version of student rebellion, with protest demonstrations over the quality of the food and the laundry services. But our relations with the university authorities and staff were cordial and never confrontational. Most of the students claimed to be socialists and Marxists but this was of a non-violent type. The Vice-Chancellor, Sir Nicholas Attygalle, was a man with a gruff exterior but in our many private meetings he was a kind and helpful gentleman.
The universities in Sri Lanka are free for students, part of the package of free education from kindergarten to university level granted by the government since 1944. It is a benefit not found anywhere else in the world (except in the former Soviet Union). Peradeniya was also a residential campus and poorer students got an additional bursary to cover other expenses. Further, all public health services and hospitals were free. Sri Lanka was still a poor developing country that could barely afford such generous social benefits.
Later that year in 1969, there was an explosion in Marrs Hall within the campus. Investigating police officers discovered that students were manufacturing bombs and collecting firearms. The Inspector-General of Police, John Attygalle, a highly respected Police veteran, presented the government with a report detailing plans by Marxist students to overthrow the government by violent revolution. The Prime Minister and her cabinet dismissed the report as a figment of police imagination. Army intelligence officers confirming this report were ridiculed by left-wing cabinet ministers.
Unbeknown to us, we had stepped into the hotbed of a violent revolutionary movement. In 1971, two years later, it broke out with a fury, with large bands of well armed youths from around the country simultaneously attacking police stations, military detachments, killing hundreds of local political leaders and those suspected of being allied to the government in politics. The then government of Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike, that had succeeded that of the gentle and mild mannered Dudley Senanayake, was caught completely by surprise. Her government had faced a right-wing coup attempt by some disgruntled army officers in 1962 and her present cabinet also consisted of left-wing leaders from the Communist and Trotskyite parties. So the government dismissed any prospect of a leftwing revolt. Eventually, she herself was forced to take refuge in a ship in the Port of Colombo for fear of being captured by the rebels.
Sri Lanka was a properly functioning democracy at the time when the USA, which was denying basic voting rights to minorities and legalising widespread discrimination against them, was not. But left-wing revolutionary fervour had been growing in Sri Lanka. And violence against the state, as distinct from peaceful protests or political organisation, once allowed, has a habit of perpetuating itself. It recurred in Sri Lanka again in 1987 and then gave way to the armed revolt of the Tamil Tigers that went on for three decades. As in Pakistan, where military coups became a pattern of political life, Sri Lanka was to be threatened by violence against the state for half a century.
After the 1962 attempted military coup, successive governments deliberately kept the military small, ill-equipped and unprepared for military action. That was a crucial mistake, rectified only after 2006. It kept the government weak and vulnerable to these armed revolts. In hindsight, it is seen that the students’ attack on the army in Peradeniya in 1969 was a test to gauge the reaction of the government to their planned insurrection. The government failed the test, giving the student revolutionaries the confirmation they needed.
Kenneth Abeywickrama
28 August 2013.