Our Founding Father and Elder Statesman

Ceylon’s first premier – a son of the soil

If  there is a figure who towered above all others in Ceylon’s struggle for independence from the Crown of Great Britain, it was Don Stephen Senanayake. Born into a family of prominent landowners, ‘DS’ – as he’s fondly remembered even today – took time to emerge as the pre-eminent figurehead in the colony’s independence movement. But when he did stand out and tall as primus inter pares (first among equals), it was as a stalwart campaigner.

Of course, Ceylon’s struggle for independence featured many other champions although it’s Senanayake who is credited with spearheading the movement – starting from its relatively innocuous roots in temperance societies islandwide until such time as tactics and strategy thrust him into the limelight; and thence to a position at the helm of the ship of state.

From offices serving in Ceylon’s Legislative and State Councils to being elected to parliament, and then its first native prime minister, his career was hardly stellar… but it was stalwart.

DS was at heart an agriculturist. Despite – or perhaps because of – being a member of the wealthy entrepreneurial class in colonial Ceylon, he was constantly at the forefront of forming farsighted policies on agriculture, irrigation and colonisation of farming lands.

His gift to a nascent nation therefore, was to ensconce it early on in its first independent steps in the boon of food security.

He was hailed in his time as being both humane and humble, the hallmarks of a rare calibre of leadership. The architect of a fledgling country on the cusp of liberty and opportunity, this colossus was the father of a future prime minister, a scion of ‘the school by the sea’ and the founder of a political party that was to dominate the parliamentary domain for decades to come…

If posterity owes him a debt of gratitude, it’s as much for his graceful architecting of a bloodless revolution as for his generosity of spirit that is characteristic of true greatness.

If posterity owes him a debt of gratitude, it’s as much for his graceful architecting of a bloodless revolution as for his generosity of spirit that is characteristic of true greatness