By Jude L. Fernando –

The historically unprecedented multiethnic vote for the National People’s Alliance in November 2024 should not be reduced to a superficial celebration of “we are all Sri Lankans” or an invitation to forget the past and move on. Such an approach ignores the deep historical injustices symbolized by Independence Day celebrations, which cannot be undone by merely electing a new government. Instead, our vote must express our collective willingness to fundamentally free history from its injustices—a call to rethink and transform the meaning of independence into a day of making history that we can meaningfully celebrate.

‘Commemoration by deprivation’ best encapsulates Independence Day celebrations from 1948 to 2024, serving as a traumatic reminder of systemic oppression for many. Rooted in distorted historical narratives and the glorification of undeserving independence heroes, these celebrations have legitimized entrenched racism, sexism, classism, and violence in nation-building—practices that are morally indefensible in any civilized society.

To truly uphold the principles of humanity and solidarity under the banner of “we are all Sri Lankans,” we must boldly confront and rectify the injustices with which we have been complicit for decades.  We must embark on processes that will allow, someday, a meaningful celebration of independence—one where every community can celebrate without fear while preserving their unique identities and autonomy within the territorial boundaries of the island. To understand and contribute to this transformative vision, we must humbly reflect on how Independence Day celebrations have historically underscored the unfreedoms of the majority, benefiting only a tiny elite who appropriated Independence Day to their narcissistic selfish interests, laying the foundation for state violence, which was met with militancy by Sinhala and Tamil groups. While not all their actions can be condoned, these struggles arose from systemic oppression and injustice.

Freeing the country from the appalling legacy of Independence Day commemorations and transforming it into a day of making history that we can meaningfully celebrate requires commemorating meaningful actions taken by the government to free its citizens from their oppressive history. Until such a transformation occurs, celebrating independence in its current form remains a mockery of freedom for most Sri Lankans and is especially traumatizing for vulnerable minorities.

One way to encapsulate the milestones of this transformative journey is to designate Independence Day 2025 as the National Memorial Day, honoring the Sinhala and Tamil youth, security forces, and countless civilians who perished or vanished in conflicts—sacrificed for selfish agendas for which not they, but so-called patriots, are responsible. On Memorial Day, we must solemnly pledge to all those who have suffered under the yoke of oppression that the NPP will rectify the historical injustices and address their concerns with unyielding dedication, ensuring that their sacrifices are neither forgotten nor in vain.

The NPP government is well-equipped to set the stage for radical change, making Independence Day 2025 a moment of profound significance—unlike any other in Sri Lanka’s political history. Public support for such a transformation must emerge from a critical reflection on the unfreedom symbolized by previous Independence Day celebrations. This would enable the NPP to win over 60% of the national vote, presenting a stark contrast to the oppressive ethno-religious nationalism that propelled Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s coalition to a similar majority on November 16, 2019—only to drive the country into an unprecedented crisis and a popular uprising.

The ‘Nation-State’—The Colonial Adversary the Native Elites Exploit

On Independence Day, we celebrate the nation-state—a British creation—imposed on an island where hitherto no political organization resembling a nation-state or the notion of citizenship existed. Instead, the island was a mosaic of communities with deep cultural and territorial affinities, enriched by waves of migrants, diverse languages, religions, and bonded laborers from colonial India. Yet, the independence narrative, invented by the local elites who inherited the nation without an independence struggle, has failed to deliver meaningful freedom and has instead entrenched the nation in enduring deprivations, from racism to sexism.

For 76 years, Sri Lanka has continued to commemorate an oppressive colonial construct of the nation, perpetuating the dominance of elites who exploit a racialized and exclusionary identity to sustain their power. These elites manipulated the process of nation-building to position themselves as freedom fighters and the rightful architects of the nation. Parading as members of “good families,” the “nobodies who became somebodies” by amassing wealth through arrack-trading, mining, and colonial-aligned industries, exploiting labor, and seizing land. They engineered a racist, ethno-religious nationalism to legitimize their authority, mimicking colonial masters in what Frantz Fanon described as Black Skin, White Masks—a nativist performance that preserved colonial privileges while marginalizing oppressed groups.

The communalism that arose from nation-building exploited religion, history, archaeology, and national symbols, denying equal freedom to all citizens through legal and militant means. Beneath this façade lies a subtler exclusion: the romanticization of the nation as ‘mother’ or ‘motherland,’ idealizing traits like care, sacrifice, nurturance, and emotional support. This cements traditional gender roles—with men as protectors—and perpetuates a gendered nationalism that enforces women’s subservience and legitimizes male dominance across societal domains. It manipulates feminine ideals to masculinize the narrative of nation-building, obscuring women’s contributions to the independence struggle, ignoring the disproportionate impact of violence and communal politics on women, and mocking the very notion of independence.

Struggle-Free and Fatherless Independence

Sri Lanka carves a dubious chapter in the history of global independence movements, gaining independence without a struggle and celebrating DS Senanayake as the ‘father of independence’—a fitting title for someone who rejected it! He suppressed advocates of genuine independence to become the country’s first Prime Minister. Since then, Independence Day celebrations have distorted this narrative and its ‘heroes,’ embedding a racialized version into the country’s political consciousness. A historically grounded understanding of this narrative, reproduced in these celebrations, is crucial—even with some oversimplification—to help the public grasp why it persists, its falsehoods, and its oppressive consequences if we are to make sense of the NPP’s efforts to rethink independence.

Formed in 1919, the Ceylon National Congress (CNC) contrasted sharply with the Indian National Congress, which pursued complete independence. AE Jayawardene, father of the late JR Jayewardene, admitted that the CNC aimed for dominion status. Backed financially by DR Wijewardena, owner of Ceylon Lakehouse, the CNC became an elite-dominated platform to promote DS Senanayake as the first Prime Minister. This alienated progressive minorities, labor, and leftist politicians, who abandoned the movement. At a pivotal Kelaniya meeting, Senanayake stormed out when the group, including his son Dudley, voted for complete independence over dominion status. Despite calls from Gandhi and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay for Swaraj (self-rule), the Tamil Youth Congress urged the Sinhala Youth Congress to join India’s independence movement, but the latter refused, siding with dominion status advocates.

Ample historical evidence shows that elites, often celebrated as national heroes, had a vested aversion to independence, fearing threats to their self-interests. The Donoughmore Commission (1927) consulted all groups but faced proposals from CNC elites for a local Prime Minister while leaving security, the judiciary, and foreign services under colonial control. They also sought to restrict voting rights to those earning over fifty rupees per month—twice the average laborer’s wage, thus excluding the majority. A few, like A.E. Gunasinghe, Philip Gunawardana, and the Jaffna Youth Congress, opposed this elitist agenda and demanded universal franchise. Fortunately, the commission granted voting rights to all, to the elites’ dismay.

CNC elites’ resistance to complete independence was also evident during the 1940 investigation into the politically charged shooting of estate laborer Govidan in Hewaheta, Central Province. PDB Jayatilleka delayed the police report to ensure it would not preempt the State Council’s release. However, a defiant police inspector released it early, sparking outrage among council members. The Lanka Sama Samaja Party, led by Philip Gunawardana and Dr. NM Perera seized on the incident to expose colonial meddling and rally support for a mass anti-colonial uprising.

Building on this climate of resistance, DS Senanayake, panicked over his fading prime ministerial prospects, clung to dominion status, likely to dissuade the British from entertaining full independence. He collaborated with the colonial government to suppress dissent and retain the island as a strategic base after Britain lost India. Senanayake also worked with colonial rulers to imprison political adversaries, who escaped to India for five years, temporarily stalling their influence amid rising anti-colonial sentiment. Exploiting British fears of communism, Senanayake secured their support, even orchestrating the appointment of Sir DB Jayathilaka—once a strong contender for Prime Minister—as Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to India, cementing his ambitions with the governor’s backing.

Riding the wave of his political cunning, DS Senanayake again outmaneuvered his opponents when the Colonial Office requested a draft constitution. He presented a document crafted by Sir Ivor Jennings as a local effort, fooling no one. Minority parties quickly exposed the ploy, leading to its rejection and the arrival of the Soulbury Commission in December 1947 to gather minority perspectives. Sensing a threat to his ambitions, Senanayake initially led the CNC to boycott the commission, only to manipulate it covertly later. As Kariyawasam wryly notes in his podcast, Senanayake and Oliver Goonetilleke—husband of Phyllis Miller, Secretary of the commission—used cultural events not for leisure but to gauge and sway the colonial officers’ thinking. Their scheming secured dominion status and cemented Senanayake’s rise to Prime Minister.

The charade of celebrating independence on February 4, 1948—mere dominion status—belies the fact that Sri Lanka became an independent republic only in 1972. DS Senanayake, the so-called ‘father’ of independence, opposed full autonomy to serve his political interests and never saw complete independence. Until 1956, Britain retained control of Trincomalee Harbour and Katunayake Airport, fueling aircraft during the Wars in the Far East, while Sri Lankan politicians swore allegiance to British monarchs until 1972. Unlike India, which transitioned from independence in 1947 to a republic by 1950, Sri Lanka’s distorted narrative of independence suppressed diverse voices—socialists, laborers, peasants, and women—who fought for genuine freedom. This revisionist history, entrenched after 1972, institutionalized communalism, racialized political consciousness, and foreclosed equal freedoms for the nation’s diverse communities.

Against this backdrop, Independence Day flaunts symbols of freedom—anthems, flags, and cultural displays—that reinforce a racialized political consciousness. These symbols persist because their historical evolution, hidden meanings, and lasting impacts remain largely unexamined—a topic I delve into below, even at the risk of overgeneralizing.

The Lanka Gandharva Sabha’s contest for the national anthem saw ‘Namo Matha’ by Samarakoon and ‘Sri Lanka Matha Pala Yasa Mahima’ by PB Illangasinghe and Lionel Edirisinghe as top contenders. Despite its creators serving as judges, the less popular ‘Sri Lanka Matha Pala Yasa Mahima’ controversially won but was absent from the 1948 Freedom Day celebration. M Nallathamby translated ‘Namo Matha’ into Tamil, preserving its essence, as advocates pushed for the anthem to be sung in both Sinhala and Tamil. While it was sung bilingually at the 1949 Independence Day ceremony, protests by Sinhala leaders and controversies at the Arragalya over bilingual performances revealed a nation unwilling to embrace equality.

Sri Lanka’s national flag, deceptively portrayed as a symbol of unity, is a stark emblem of the militant dominance of the majority over minorities. The lion, consuming 80% of the flag’s space, represents the mythical Sinhalese ‘lion race,’ gripping a sword poised to subjugate minorities, reduced to a narrow set of colored stripes. The four Bo tree leaves in the corners, a glaring assertion of Buddhist supremacy, further reinforce the exclusion of other ethnic and religious groups, including Tamils, who had no significant role in its design. Parliamentarian Premalal Kumarasiri of the Communist Party, during the debate over the national flag (March 1951) warned that such a divisive and oppressive symbol would ignite war within fifty years—a grim reality realized when the lion met its challenger in the tiger, emblazoned on the Tamil Tigers’ flag during a 30-year war for liberation from the Sri Lankan state.

Under Rajapaksa regimes, Independence Day parades and symbols distorted the sacrifices of all communities in the 30-year war, glorifying the communalism that fueled it while stripping minorities of cultural and economic freedoms. The Rajapaksas positioned themselves as the true heroes of independence, ignoring Tamil demands for justice. Token gestures, like minority dances and religious figures, merely masked entrenched racialized nationalism.

The slogan “We are all Sri Lankans” rang hollow as post-war Sinhalization of the north and east intensified. War memorials and archaeological sites were racialized, Sinhala Buddhist symbols asserted dominance and land seizures were gradually implemented under the guise of national security, further restricting livelihoods. The humanitarianism embodied in these memorials was a deceptive strategy to sanitize the war, displacing humanity from the center of the government’s post-war policies that denied Tamil communities’ demands for justice. Far from fostering healing, the government’s portrayal of the civil war as a humanitarian mission against terrorism turned post-war independence into a traumatic experience for minorities. By mystifying the war’s legacy with racist undertones, the celebrations rewrote history, recasting the Rajapaksas as the architects of peace.

Accumulation of Power and Wealth by Deprivation

Since 1948, Independence Day celebrations have devolved into a tragicomic farce, echoing the themes of Sophocles’ Antigone. What began as a commemoration of freedom became a pageant for expanding it only for the privileged, mystifying the root causes of unfreedom—inequality, dispossession, and elite dominance. Cloaked in nepotism, these festivities glorify a distorted history that legitimizes disenfranchisement and violence, disproportionately affecting minorities while extinguishing hope for democratic justice.

In a landscape of denied freedoms, armed uprisings—Tamil militancy (1980-2014) and the JVP in 1989—seemed the only responses left for many. Ironically, the celebrations champion the so-called pillars of ‘independence’—authoritarianism, racism, sexism, nepotism, state violence, and evasion of accountability. We mark this ‘freedom’ each year with fireworks because nothing says liberty quite like dressing oppression with a fireworks celebration.

Politics of Language and Youth Uprisings

Adopting Sinhala as the official language in 1956 was touted as a patriotic move. This move effectively masked the preservation of English-medium education for the elite, ensuring their children continued in exclusive schools. This policy has left lasting scars, as the government consistently failed to enforce its language policies, even in official documents. The politics that transpired from this move, coupled with linking Sinhala with the country’s racialized history, exacerbated the gap between the deceptively indigenized elites and the vernacular-speaking masses. Independence meant ensuring the elite never had to sully themselves with vernacular struggles.

The selective nationalization of schools allowed the elite to retain English-medium instruction while imposing Sinhala in higher education, highlighting land ownership, wealth, and upward mobility disparities. These inequities drove youth to embrace Marxist analysis, which was then gaining global traction. In 1971, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) launched an insurrection against the UPFA government, which ironically sought British help to crush it, framing it as a lingering colonial threat. With British assistance, the rebellion was brutally suppressed. A year later, the same government introduced a republican constitution with left-wing leaders like Colvin R de Silva, enshrining Buddhism at its core, racializing religion, and further excluding minorities. Combined with standardized tests, it sowed the seeds for future Tamil youth uprisings for freedom.

Malaiyaha Tamils in Two Hundred Years of Bondage

Dating back to the colonial era, post-colonial governments have continued to use plantation workers— of the Malaiyaha Tamils community—as political pawns, perpetuating their subhuman living conditions for over two hundred years. Their labor remains vital to foreign exchange earnings, enriching elites while funding free education, healthcare, and infrastructure. Yet, they face brutal rejection—denied land ownership, proper addresses, and even basic infrastructure.

As plantations are neglected in favor of profit-driven industrialization, oppression intensifies, relegating workers to precarious, low-wage, and racially discriminatory jobs. A glaring symbol of this exploitation is the practice of recruiting domestic help from these plantations, treating these workers as an endless supply of cheap labor. Meanwhile, those exploiting their labor portray it as charity to the deprived, conveniently earning humanitarian accolades and stacking up good karma in this life and the next.

Legacy of Racism in Nation-Building

Sinhala-dominated political parties have consistently used minorities as political pawns, repeatedly abandoning viable solutions like federalism, regional unions, or a tepidly implemented 13th Amendment. Over the years, minorities have become accustomed to a relentless cycle of election promises followed by post-election betrayals regarding political solutions to the ethnic conflict. With the advent and aftermath of the war, communalism escalated to the extent that no majoritarian political party dared to propose solutions acceptable to minorities. This obstructionism has blocked all paths to equal citizenship for minorities, transforming their legitimate demands for equality into calls for a separate state.

Even Rohana Wijeweera, the late JVP leader, who once acknowledged Tamils’ right to self-determination in Jaffna, failed to politically advocate for these rights or defend the Ceylon and plantation Tamils—a misstep for which the JVP later apologized. With few exceptions, the political left was complicit, ignoring the issue, lacking moral courage, or reducing communalism to mere political strategy and narrow class politics. This must be viewed in the context of the state’s use of communalism and propaganda to isolate socialists and undermine alliances across ethnic divides. Ethnonationalism bears responsibility for silencing the ecumenical struggle for freedom by all communities.

When JR Jayewardene assumed power in 1977, the country plunged into an era of profound unfreedom, cloaked in the deceptive renaming of the nation as the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, with hollow promises of justice and liberty. This façade bolstered a racialized vision of Sinhala civilization, anchored in water tanks, temples, and paddy fields, as Jayewardene cast himself as a reincarnation of the righteous Buddhist King Asoka. His economic policies, designed to enrich a minority in collaboration with international actors, enabled the colonization of the country’s resources, leading to dispossession and deprivation that disproportionately impacted Tamil-speaking minorities.  His policies further poisoned an already communalized and morally bankrupt political landscape, erecting constitutional and legal fortresses that strangled meaningful freedom and prosperity. This betrayal fueled three decades of brutal state violence and Tamil and Sinhala militancy, both born as desperate struggles against the militarized deprivation of economic and political liberties and the denial of equality.

Misguided Economics: The Intellectual Backbone of Deprivation

Inclusive and sustainable freedom depends on economic equality. If you are a mainstream economist, or follow their rationale —enslaved by orthodox dogma, clinging to narrow indicators, and blaming economic failures solely on governance while ignoring the inextricable links between racism, sexism, and neoliberalism—you might see JR Jayewardene’s so-called economic gains as progress. These gains rested on dispossession, inequality, and deindustrialization, exposing the economy to intractable shocks without relying on the same forces that caused them.

These were not mere inefficiencies but deliberate outcomes of reckless privatization, the selloff of national wealth and resources to multinationals, and the surrender of sovereignty to neoliberal overlords—the IMF, World Bank, and the World Trade Organization -the “unholy trinity”, and other geopolitical forces. These policies gutted the country’s wealth and stripped future leaders of the freedom to craft independent economic policies, chaining the nation to a perpetual cycle of dependency and deprivation.

Mainstream economists have blinded us to the reality that these inequities are inherent to the theories of growth-led development, politically managed by the state, which often resorts to communalism and sexism to legitimize them—what African American writer Cedric Robinson aptly describes as the inevitable outcomes of ‘racial capitalism’.

Communalism became the perfect political decoy for regimes following Jayewardene—an insidious ploy to obscure harsh realities while fostering division through war and committing human rights abuses against all communities to entrench authoritarianism and suppress dissent, a strategy Rajapaksa took to unprecedented extremes. Meanwhile, political opponents of the Rajapaksa regimes limited their criticism to corruption, nepotism, and repression, carefully avoiding promises to address the grievances of Tamil-speaking minorities.

Peace without Justice: The Deceptive Calm After the Storm

The peace after the Civil War—welcomed as a respite from violence—became a triumph of racist nationalism and pseudo-patriots, not a feeling of peace, freedom, or justice. Over 400,000 Sinhala and Tamil people were killed, executed, or tortured, while countless activists, academics, and journalists opposing human rights abuses were displaced or disappeared. The JVP and the military honored their fallen, but Tamils were denied this right; their graveyards were razed and replaced with government monuments portraying the war as a humanitarian mission. This deepened trauma for minorities in the northeast, obstructed reconciliation, and turned national independence into a haunting reminder of oppression.

If we are serious about inclusive freedom, we must remember that the Tamil and Sinhala youth uprisings are two sides of the same coin, intrinsically linked despite their differences. Both arose from elite manipulation of communalism, economic hardship, and suppressed freedoms, with similar systemic injustices pushing both groups into conflict. By labeling these youths as ‘terrorists’ and commemorating only military personnel on Independence Days, politicians not only showed a biased view of heroism but also ignored the deprivations, sacrifices, and trauma suffered by all communities, including the military—caused not solely by them but by selfish political interests. This entrenchment plunged the country into cycles of suffering and unresolved conflict. In 2004, after defeating the Tamil militants, the Rajapaksa government flaunted racial nationalism during Independence Day celebrations, positioning itself as the guardian of national unity while avoiding accountability for disappearances, human rights abuses, and legal violations, all justified under the guise of ‘national security’.

Islamophobia: Another Unreliable Enemy

Even after the war, anti-minority violence persisted, weaponized to control communities and silence dissent. While war-torn communities sought justice, celebrations glorified the Rajapaksas’ victories and shifted blame to a new scapegoat: Muslims. A Muslim doctor was falsely accused of sterilizing Sinhala women, and rumors claimed Muslim-owned restaurants spiked food with birth control—fabrications to incite fear and division. The 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, allegedly enabled by some politicians, provided a pretext to deepen communal divides, turning fear into a political weapon. Amid this, Gotabaya Rajapaksa rose to power. After his ousting, Ranil Wickremesinghe perpetuated the Rajapaksa political culture, shielding them from accountability to secure his survival—an effort undone as the NPP decisively defeated him and his party in the 2024 elections. The Islamophobia fostered by the government unleashed violence across the country and placed Muslims in a precarious position. Yet, it failed to salvage the Rajapaksa and Gotabaya regimes from electoral defeat.

People for Economic and Political Freedom

As the economic crisis deepened, communalism’s grip weakened, with the public recognizing the real culprits: regimes that enriched a privileged few through shady asset sales, bribes, backdoor deals, and reckless privatization while subjecting the majority to surveillance, deprivation of livelihoods, and restricted mobility under the guise of development, national security, and environmental protection, which disproportionately impacted minorities. While politicians and their allies prospered, the majority faced crippling shortages, pushing the nation toward bankruptcy. Growing fears of losing assets and sovereignty turned the country into a battleground for superpowers, challenging any party’s claim to true freedom of governance. The so-called patriotic defenders of the nation were unmasked as traitors, their failures too glaring to hide behind the veil of racist nationalism.

The Aragalaya, a people’s movement fueled by decades of struggle from workers, peasants, teachers, Tamil mothers, Malayagam Tamils, and civil society groups, exposed the deceit of freedom and the treason of so-called guardians of liberty. It achieved the unimaginable–– commemorating Mullivaikkal, a tragedy Tamils consider genocide—in the heart of Colombo, breaking long-held taboos and paving the way for the NPP’s rise to political prominence. Elite politics, driven by class, caste, and oppressive divisions, reliant on narrow, opportunistic identity politics, was finally defeated, at least for now.

The “(In)dependence” Day celebrations so far, with their symbols, so-called heroes, and underlying oppressive narratives, are opportunistic inventions with no historical or moral obligation for us to uphold. Breaking free from this toxic tradition is essential for the systemic change the people demand from the NPP. We must dismantle the charade of 76 years of Independence commemorations and reconfigure it as a National Memorial Day to ensure that the losses of all communities in their struggles for meaningful freedom are honored and remembered. This transformation must be a cornerstone of the renaissance that the NPP has promised to all communities.