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Don Stephen Senanayake (October 20, 1884 – March 22, 1952) was the first Prime Minister of Independent post-colonial Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) from 1947 to 1952. A prominent independence activist, Senanayake rose to prominence as a leader of Sri Lanka’s peaceful campaign to achieve independence from Great Britain in the early part of the 20th century. He was a leading member of the committee which drafted Sri Lanka’s first independent constitution in 1946 and was appointed Prime Minister of the soon to be independent nation the following year. Senanayake was also founding President of the United National Party (UNP), which remains a leading political party in Sri Lanka.

Although he fought to win independence from Great Britain, as Prime Minister he maintained good relations with Britain and other Western nations, as well as in the Eastern nations, maintaining a strong non-aligned policy. He was instrumental in the planning and implementation of the “Gal Oya” irrigation and colonization scheme, which gave new life to low country farmers. One of the most popular politicians in the country at the time, Senanayake was re-elected as Prime Minister in 1952, when, under his leadership, the UNP won the parliamentary elections by a landslide. He was however unable to his full term, as he was killed in a horse riding accident in November 1952, to be succeeded as Prime Minister by his son Dudley Senanayake.

D.S. Senanayake remains highly regarded amongst the county’s population, as is often referred to as the “Father of the Nation”.

Early life
Don Stephen Senanayake was born on October 20, 1884 in the village in Botale, in the Hapitigam Korale of the Gampaha District of Sri Lanka. He was the second son of Mudaliar Don Spater Senanayake and Katherine Elizabeth Perera, and was brought up in Botale Walawwa, the family home. His was a devout Buddhist family, and one of his ancestors was among a party of Buddhists who taking a sapling of the sacred Sri Maha Bodhi Tree to be planted in a shrine in Attanagalla. When the tree got accidentally planted in Botale, where the party stayed the night, his ancestor is said to have made it his home.

His family traced its history back to the time of the Portuguese colonists of the island. Although deeply steeped in tradition and religion, the Senanayake family worked with the Portuguese and later colonists, which helped them become one of the rich families of the area. That is also why they took up the “Don” prefix for their names.

Senanayake was the youngest of the boys in the family, the other two been D.C. Senanayake and F.R. Senanayake. He initially learnt Sinhalese from a tutor who visited Botale Walawwa. He followed his brothers to St Thomas' College, which was then located at Mutuwal. While at school, Senanayake took part in Wrestling, as well as Boxing, Tennis and Cricket, where he earned a reputation as a hard hitting batsman. He was however did not excel in his studies and was not known as a great orator either. However the school helped develop a self confidence in himself, which would later enable him to deal with leading politician and statesman from around the world.

After his secondary education, he began life as a clerk in the Surveyor Generals department, but resigned to manage his family’s affairs, mainly rubber on his father’s estate,, following the death of his father on November 7, 1907. Rubber at the time was one of the most rich and mostly traded commodities in Sri Lanka, and his father had amassed a substantial fortune, which his family would go on to use for their political affairs.

Senanayake married Molly Dunuwila in 1910, and their only son Dudley was born in July 1911. Managing the family affairs meant Senanayake had to interact extensively with peasants, and determine their concerns first hand, something most of the leading aristocrats of the future independence movement of Sri Lanka had failed to do. This also made him determined to improve their living conditions.

Independence movement
In Sri Lanka, unlike in other British colonies, the movement for independence was more one of political reformists rather than freedom fighters.

D.S. Senanayake was among a few individuals who campaigned vigorously to achieve independence for Sri Lanka. Along with other political reformists who worked to achieve independence for the country, including E. W. Perera, Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan, Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam, F. R. Senanayake, D. S. Senanayake, E. W. Jayewardene, H. J. C. Perera, D. R. Wijewardene, they are considered national heroes in modern Sri Lanka. They campaigned for wide ranging political reforms and wider freedom that was granted by the existing Legislative councils.

The catalyst for the reforms was the riots which took place in the island in 1915. Begun after an incident between the riots of 1915 spread across the country and resulted in widespread fighting between the Sinhalese and Muslim ethnic groups. The scale of the clashes resulted in British administrators of the country mistaking them to be a rebellion against British rule, akin to the riots of 1815 and 1845.

FR was a Cambridge educated barrister and was among the prominent nationalists of the early 20th century. All three brothers were imprisoned during the 1915 anti-Muslim riots for their alleged complicity in the riots. However commentators of the time indicate they all worked hard to check the riots and to maintain law and order.

As the First World War was in progress at the time, there were also fears among the British rulers of the sountry coming under the increasing influence of the German. They acted swiftly, imposing martial law and imprisoning many influential Sri Lankan political leaders, including D.S. Senanayake, his brother F.R. Senanayake, and other including A. E. Goonesinha and Boralugoda Ralahamy. Punjabi soldiers were brought to the Island from India to quell the riots, and they proceeded to shoot hundreds of innocent civilians on sight. .

In one particular incident which had a profound impact on Senanayake, Capt. Henry Pedris of the town guard, the son of a rich Colombo businessmen, was arrested on false charges of inciting the mobs and sentences to death following a sham trial. Despite pleas for leniency from a number of leading figures at the time, the British governor orders his execution to taken place. On June 4, 1915, Pedris was executed at the Welikada prison, as Senanayake and a number of other political prisoners including looked on. In an account of the incident, … wrote D.S Senanayake openly wept following the execution, and vowed to get rid of the British from the island.

In the face of the brutal repression by the British governor, E.W. Perera, an advocate from Kotte, gave up his practice and braved German mine infested seas to travel to Britain to campaign for a repeal the moves. Carrying a memorial to the Secretary of State to the Colonies hidden in the soles of his shoes, Perera describing the atrocities committed by the Punjabi and British troops and the local Police led by the IGP, Sir Herbert Dowbiggin and pleaded for the repeal of Martial Law. The British government recalled Governor Chamlers, repealed martial law and appointed Sir John Anderson as the new governor to Ceylon. Anderson was much better, and worked to win the hearts and minds of the people of the country. .

They came out of prison determined to form a national society and in 1919 founded the Ceylon national congress.

Following the riots, the movement for independence gained greater momentum following the formation of the Ceylon National Congress, led by figures including D.S. Senanayake, Sir James Peiris and E. W. Jayewardene, who began organizing public agitation campaigns for independence. Other leaders such as D.R Wijewardene and E.J. Samarawickrema operated behind the scenes, drafting letters and memorandums to members of the British parliament presenting the case of greater political in Sri Lanka. .

As the movement gathered strength in the early 20th century, the British government appointed Donoughmore to look into reforms. His report, titled the Donoughmore Commission report, created the the State council and Executive committee system in 1931. A landmark change brought upon by the Donoughmore recommendations was that the members of the councils were for the first time elected via Universal Adult Franchise.

As the leaders were still not content with the devolution granted, a new commission headed by Lord Soulbury was created, and its recommendations were implemented along with a new constitution titled the Soulbury Constitution. A key aspect of the constitution was that it called on the eventual granting of complete political freedom to Sri Lanka. It also laid the framework for the first constitution of Sri Lanka.

Sir Ivor Jennings, who was initially sent to Sri Lanka to create a university on the island, was in a big way responsible for drafting the first constitution of Sri Lanka.

Involvement in Politics
Initially, D.S. Senanayake was not actively involved in national politics. He was overshadowed by his brother Fredrick Richard Senanayake, who was a significant contributor to a number of nationalist movements of the time, including the Young Men’s Buddhist Association (YMBA) which he heavily financed and worked for along with their other brother Don Charles Senanayake, and the Anagarika Dharmapala's historically significant Temperance Movement, to which he was introduced by their father. Fredrick Senanayake also the first leader of the Ceylon Independence Party.

F.R. Senanayake's death while on a pilgrimage to Bodh Gaya in 1926, soon propelled D.S. Senanayake into his place. This was also influenced by the fact that Don Charles, who was known as the man behind the scenes, shunned the limelight. D.S. Senanayake entered the national legislature, the called the State Council, in 1926 at the age of 42. In 1931 he was appointed Minister of Agriculture and Lands of the State Council, a post he would hold for the next 16 years.

As a legislator he attained a reputation of having common sense and the ability to judge other men. He had to depend on these skills unlike most other leaders of the time, who depended on their academic achievement and professional standing, neither of which he had.

He consistently His first and only election would be the one in 1947.

Later, along with D.S he would work prominently in the “Lanka Mahajana Sabha”.

State Council
During World War II, as rationing was been implemented, which saw the significant decrease in rice supplies, he worked to find new ways to feed the population, opening new trade with Egypt and Brazil, as well as increasing imports of the less consumed yet internationally more available wheat flour tenfold.

In 1923 Senanayake founded the cooperative society movement – which provided essential items at low cost to middle and low income families. Throughout his tenure in public service, he continued to emphasize the development of cooperatives and also attempted to modernize the agricultural industry in the country.

On the basis of his reputation as a practical agriculturist and his commitment to uplift the lives of rural people he was appointed a member of the land commission in 1927. It was also a recognition of his growing status in public life as part of the county’s political leadership of the independence movement.

In 1931 for the first time Sri Lanka gained universal franchise and direct elections to the state council were held. DS was returned uncontested as the representative of the Minuangoda electorate.

As minister of Agriculture he wrote in 1932 “colonization of the dry zone is the only way out: the distribution of population in the various parts of the country is such that immigration from the over-populous zones to less crowded areas will soon become not a matter of choice, but a grim necessity”. This led him to launch his agricultural master plans, initial the Minneriya scheme, which marked the beginning of the rehabilitation of the Polonnaruwa district.

Others include the Elahara project, the Balaluwewa farmer colonization scheme, the Minipe scheme, the Kalawewa-Kagama farmer colony, the Ella-Kantale project and the Bathmedilla Project.

An artificial lake build for irrigation was posthumously named after him, as the Senanayake Samudraya.

As Minister of Agriculture and Lands, he undertook a number of irrigational schemes and established many colonized settlements with a view to securing self sufficiency in essential foods.

The Senanayake Samudra, the Parakrama Samudra, Nachchaduwa, Padaviya, Minipe, Minneriya were some of the project he undertook.

In 1936 Sir D.B Jayathilake accepted the post of Ceylon’s Representative in India, and his position as Leader of the House fell vacant. DS was a unanimous choice for the position.

The same year, Dudley returned from England, where he had obtained a Master of Arts degree from the University of Cambridge and also qualified as a Barrister-at-Law. Although reluctant, he was coaxed by his friends into contesting the Dedigama electorate at the elections that year. He comfortably won the election, obtaining over twice as much votes as his closest opponent and, at 24, becoming one of the youngest members of the State Council.

He became Ceylon’s first Minister of Agriculture and Lands, and that gave him the authority to implement his plans.

Irrigation and Agricultural activity in dry zone lands, which was largely ignored by the British colonists who focused more on cash crops, saw increased activity for the first time since the ancient Sinhalese Kingdoms.

In 1934, he formulated his agricultural master plan, in a book titled “Agriculture and Patriotism” (OCLC: 41401618), in which he set out his ideas on how to immediately improve the agriculture of the country and also define a course of long term plans. Under him, the ancient tanks of Minneriya, Kalawewa, Topawewa and Giritale, which were built during ancient times, were restored to harness their full resources. Minneriya for example, along with its colonies of Higurakgoda and Hath Amuna was designed to bring 50,000 acres of Dry Zone land under cultivation. Other tanks, wuch as the 17,000 acres Kahagama colony, which came under the Balalu Wewa irrigation scheme and the Minipe colony were also developed.

Independence
As one of the leaders of the independence movement, Senanayake was left with a number of ways in which to push the British to grant independence. Armed struggle was, as was non-cooperation, as was seen in India. However Senanayake realized that unless non-cooperation was highly disciplined, it would lead to violence, as Gandhi was to discover. Senanayake opted to follow a course of persuasion, lobbing the British government to grant Sri Lanka, without taking any explicit action to that extent, as above all he wished to avoid violence.

As the head of the Independence party, he worked to achieve independence for Sri Lanka. He became leader of the state council in 1942 and played a big part in the drafting of the constitution of 1946, and became the Prime Minister of the country with the implementation of the constitution the next year.

D.S. Senanayake was one of the authors of the first constitution drafted by the Ceylon National Congress in 1944, which advocated independence for Sri Lanka. As a result, the British Government appointed the Soulbury Commission to draft a new constitution for Sri Lanka which would “…..”

The commission recommended a new constitution along the line of that drafted by the CNC be implemented, which would provide self governance for the nation, while retaining some imperial safe guards, mainly in matters of defense.

After working hard with the Soulbury Commission, in the west there was much speculation that it would be rejected by the State Council. However Senanayake was able to persuade the members to pass the constitution by a near unanimous decision. His main reason for success was winning over the minorities, who were suspicious of the communal representation and the balance of power which would be dictated by the constitution, to his way of thinking.

The elections to elect members to the county’s first independent parliament were held between August 23 and September 20, 1947. The United National Party, led by D.S. Senanayake became the largest party in the legislature, winning 42 of the 95 seats, followed by the leftist Lanka Sama Samaja Party with 10 seats and the Tamil Congress with 7 seats. The Ceylon Indian Congress, comprised of Indian Tamils won 6 seats.

In 1947, DS contested the election in the Mirigama electorate, winning over 26,000 votes. Dudley too won the Dedigama electorate by a large majority.