LSSP @ 90: The Sama Samaja Role in Constitutional Issues

On the occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), this article highlights the party's positions on constitutional matters.

- BY (DR) JAYAMPATHY WICKRAMARATNE, President's Counsel

When the LSSP was founded, it had two primary objectives: obtaining complete political independence for Sri Lanka and building a socialist society. The first of these was achieved in two stages. The LSSP directly contributed to achieving semi-independence in 1948 through its anti-imperialist struggle and full political independence in 1972. The second objective remains a distant goal.

In the very second year after independence, the D. S. Senanayake government acted to deny citizenship to the Hill-Country Tamil community and, consequently, deprived them of voting rights. In the 1947 election, many Hill-Country Tamils-who voted as British subjects-were inclined toward the Left, and especially toward the Sama Samaja Party. In that election, the Ceylon Indian Congress won seven seats, and with the support of plantation workers in areas where they were numerous, several left-wing candidates were also elected.

Seeing the long-term danger in this alliance, the Sri Lankan capitalist class ensured that the Citizenship Act defined the term "citizen" in a way that denied citizenship to hundreds of thousands of Hill-Country Tamil people. As a result, they also lost their voting rights. At that time, it was the Left, led by the Sama Samaja Party, that opposed this.

While the Tamil Congress, a coalition partner of the government at the time, voted in favour of the legislation, S.J.V. Chelvanayakam stated that the inability of Tamil leaders to protect their cousins-the Hill-Country Tamil communityshowed that being a partner in a Colombo-based government brought no benefit to minority groups. He argued that the lesson to be learned was the need for self-government in the regions where they lived. Chelvanayakam's founding of the Federal Party was one consequence of this process.