{"id":15893,"date":"2013-02-05T14:50:03","date_gmt":"2013-02-05T19:50:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=15893"},"modified":"2013-02-05T14:50:03","modified_gmt":"2013-02-05T19:50:03","slug":"speculating-on-what-sri-lanka-would-have-been-on-the-basis-of-an-alternativecounterfactual-post-independence-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=15893","title":{"rendered":"Speculating on What Sri Lanka would have been on the Basis of an Alternative,Counterfactual Post-Independence History"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ranga Jayasuriya<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sixty five years ago on this day, when Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, received independence, our per capita income was Rs 397 (US$ 120 then), which was on par with Japan. At that time, the per capita income of South Korea was US$ 86, on par with South Sudan. Hong Kong was then, a fishing harbour. Taiwan was guarding itself from marauding Maoists. <\/p>\n

The departing British left a flourishing economy, which then had a surplus in the trade account and a Constitution that was meant to serve as the springboard for the infant nation to launch itself into a functioning democracy. What fallowed the departure of the British is now history. But how Sri Lanka squandered, big time, its post independent prospects for the next 65 years should kindle the research interests of political scientists.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

However, the post independent failure of Sri Lanka is not unique. It is part of a wider, sometimes, far more blatant and destructive fall of newly independent states, and a wider failure of liberal democratic transition of former colonies of the British Empire. In terms of democratization, those newly independent countries in Asia and Africa were part of the second wave of democratization, a phrase coined by Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington, to describe the spread of democracy in the world. And the failure of those countries to consolidate democracy resulted in the second counter wave of democracy, which began in the late 50s.<\/p>\n

This does not mean to we lump Sri Lanka together with the newly independent states of Indonesia , Pakistan, Nigeria and many others, where electoral democracies were soon replaced by military dictatorships. The Sri Lankan situation was one of underperformance, rather than an outright failure. In the political front, it is the failure of the country to transform itself from a nominal electoral democracy to a liberal democracy. That is in total contrast to the promise that it held when it gained independence.<\/p>\n

\u2018What if\u2019<\/p>\n

In the economic front, it was the failure of the country to exploit social and physical infrastructure that the departing British left intact, in order to achieve a rapid economic take off. <\/p>\n

In historiography, there is a realm called counterfactual history, also known as alternative history, which seeks to explore the history by extrapolating a timeline in which it is assumed that certain key events did not occur or that the outcome of those incidents could have been different than they turned out to be.<\/p>\n

It seeks to speculate an alternative history on the premise that \u2018what if\u2019 certain key events did not happen.<\/p>\n

Here is my take on Sri Lanka\u2019s counterfactual history.<\/p>\n

1. What if Sir John Kotelawala won the election in 1956, instead of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike?<\/p>\n

Bandaranaike unleashed a wave of regressive populist sentiments and implemented policies that had a far-reaching impact on independent Sri Lanka. Bandaranaike\u2019s compulsory Swabasha education policy, in the long run, resulted in the country losing its edge in education and research. Populist sentiments that he unleashed and nurtured during the formative age of the newly independent nation, in order to secure his electoral victory, later resulted in the exclusion of ethnic minorities from the State, which in the 80s manifested in a full blown civil war.<\/p>\n

Sir John Kotelawala, with his westernized outlook could have been the polar opposite to Bandaranaike who had a largely Sinhalese-Buddhist agenda. However, it was unlikely that Kotelawala could have embarked on the policies akin to those implemented by Bandaranaike, which, despite their rather modest outlook, had drastic implications on the post-independent history of Sri Lanka. <\/p>\n

2. What if the failed 1962 military coup hatched by a group of senior military officers to oust the then democratically elected left-leaning Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the widow of the assassinated Prime Minister, had been successful?<\/p>\n

This hypothesis questions the merit of electoral democracy against a liberal autocracy the latter being considered as the best possible scenario, the coup could have produced, among many other less savoury options. The officers engaged in the coup were in fact disgruntled with the populist tilt of the then regime. The Sirimavo Bandaranaike regime survived the coup and later took the nation on a perilous journey through its destructive, statist economic policies. However, military coups that replaced the democratically elected governments elsewhere, during that era, had never been altruistic. They plundered the nation\u2019s wealth. Even the military despots who delivered economic miracles such as Park Chung-hee of South Korea, whose 20-year rule saw the country\u2019s economy expanding by 20 fold, also reigned over a human rights basket case. Whatever, the outlook of the regime, a military coup could have had drastic implications on the electoral democracy in the country.<\/p>\n

However, there is another school of thought: Democracy correlates with income levels of a country. One time pro-growth authoritarian regimes, such as Taiwan and South Korea successfully evolved into practicing democracies once those countries reach higher economic levels. Democracy and civil liberties in higher income countries are less likely to be reversed, a phenomenon we in Sri Lanka have been witnessing in recent times under the so-called elected governments.<\/p>\n

\u2018Unpatriotic\u2019<\/p>\n

3. What if the JVP insurgency in 1971 succeeded in toppling the regime of Sirimavo Bandaranaike?<\/p>\n

Rohana Wijeweera and his bunch of revolutionaries could have created a killing field in Sri Lanka, drawing from experience of red comrades in China, Cambodia and North Korea, the latter which actively supported the insurgency.<\/p>\n

4. What could have happen if J.R. Jayewardene did not win the general election of 1977?<\/p>\n

J.R. Jayewardene is vilified, rightly so, for his authoritarian tendencies. However, his critics disregard his greatest contribution to the country: The free market economy, which helped Sri Lanka weather a full blown war launched by the Tamil Tigers, and to grow at a modest 4 .5% during his era. That was twice the figure of miserable 2% GDP growth recorded from 1970-1977. <\/p>\n

5. Last, the rather \u2018unpatriotic\u2019 but pertinent question. What if our independence was delayed by 30 years? That is a rather difficult one to extrapolate. But, there is one example in Asia itself. Hong Kong, which from a fishing harbour in 1950 had evolved into a financial hub in Asia by the time it was handed over to the Chinese by the British in 1996, after a 99-year lease.COURTESY:CEYLON TODAY<\/em><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ranga Jayasuriya Sixty five years ago on this day, when Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, received independence, our per capita income was Rs 397 (US$ 120 then), which was on par with Japan. At that time, the per capita income of South Korea was US$ 86, on par with South Sudan. Hong Kong was then, …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Speculating on What Sri Lanka would have been on the Basis of an Alternative,Counterfactual Post-Independence History’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15893"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15893"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15894,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15893\/revisions\/15894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}