How India got entangled in the geopolitical games in 1950s Ceylon

Scroll.in

26-04-2025

In November 1955, the governor general of Ceylon, Oliver Goonetilleke, invited the Indian high commissioner, Birendra Narayan Chakravarty, to spend a few days as his guest in the hill station of Nuwara Eliya. The meeting went well – at first.
'I had a good opportunity of talking with him freely on various subjects, though later when the Pakistan High Commissioner also came as a house guest, the talks became somewhat restrained,' Chakravarty wrote in a letter to the Ministry of External Affairs.
Chakravarty's letters reveal a picture of the diplomatic relationship at the time between India and Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. On the surface, it might appear that the two enjoyed warm diplomatic ties after they attained independence from Britain, but in truth, there were tensions simmering between them.
What was souring the relations especially was the lack of clarity on India's role in the island. Should India have a hands-off approach? Or should it be more involved?
Geopolitical assistance
In Nuwara Eliya, Goonetilleke expressed disappointment that India was not giving Ceylon more geopolitical help. 'The Governor-General also asked whether it is not possible for Mr. Nehru whose views are listened to with the greatest respect in the world, to take up the causes of the closest neighbours like Ceylon and Burma more earnestly,' Chakravarty wrote. 'He cited, for instance, when Ceylon had the rubber-rice trade pact with China, the US stopped the supply of an essential commodity like sulphur to the great distress of Ceylon.'
In 1952, Ceylon, facing a severe rice shortage, had signed a trade agreement with China called the Rubber-Rice Pact to exchange rubber for rice. The agreement, which lasted for three decades, infuriated the United States, which was intent on stopping the spread of communism to South Asia. To punish Ceylon, Washington invoked the Mutual Defence Assistance Act that prevented it from giving aid to any nation that was selling strategic materials to communist countries.
Goonetilleke told Chakravarty that India could have stepped in in this situation. 'No attempt was made by India to intercede with the United States on behalf of Ceylon,' Chakravarty cited Goonetilleke as saying. 'India is a great nation and she is not afraid to incur the displeasure of either the East or the West in advocating the cause of world peace.'
Such remarks were normally taken with a pinch of salt by Indian envoys, especially since the Ceylonese ruling class' real thinking was in plain view in the local press and political mouthpieces. To many of them, India was not an intermediary but a meddler.
In Nuwara Eliya, though, Goonetilleke expressed a different sentiment. 'He thought that there should be even closer unity between India, Burma and Ceylon,' Chakravarty wrote in the letter to the Indian foreign ministry. 'I said that within our limitations, we try to do what we can for our neighbours. I cited, for instance, the Prime Minister's efforts to win Russian support for Ceylon's admission to the UN and our taking up the case of Burma in connection with the presence of the KMT [Kuomintang or Chinese Nationalist Party] troops in north Burma.'
Chakravarty told Goonetilleke that India had no intention of 'thrusting' itself in the affairs of another country, when there was 'so much unjustified talk that we are anxious to get the leadership of Asia'. 'I assured the Governor-General that if on any particular issue, Ceylon wishes to have the support of India, we would do all we can to help them,' he added.
'Hero of Bandung'
While Goonetilleke may not have been entirely insincere in reaching out to New Delhi, it is unlikely that Ceylon's prime minister John Kotelawala would have supported the idea. A graduate of Christ's College in Cambridge, Kotelawala had a strong dislike for Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
In the mid-1950s, Nehru was widely regarded as one of the greatest statesmen in the world. He wanted good relations with both China and the US, although with the US, that did not always work. In contrast, Kotelawala leaned a lot more towards Washington.
One time this difference came into sharp focus was after the Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung in 1955. While almost every participating nation praised Nehru's leadership, the Colombo press lauded Kotelawala for standing up to both the Indian prime minister and Chinese premier Zhou Enlai.
An article in the official journal of Ceylon's United National Party claimed that 26 of the 29 nations at the conference hailed Kotelawala as the 'Hero of Bandung'. 'Sir John saved the conference from pious but empty talk,' the journal wrote. 'They would have otherwise gathered round to hear the usual sermon on the need for 'peace,' 'understanding,' 'accord,' 'goodwill' etc., etc., of which J. Nehru is such a sanctimonious parrot.'
This editorialising should be seen in the context of Ceylon's domestic politics, where SWRD Bandaranaike's promises of pro-Sinhala Buddhist policies were gaining him popularity among the electorate and posing a threat to Kotelawala's position.
The journal of the United National Party added, 'The conference, including Nehru, would have kow-towed to Chou En-lai. Nehru and Chou would have hatched plots in secret, as in fact that arch conspirator Krishna Menon tried to do, and the 27 other delegates would have been expected to say 'Ehei' to the 'Big Two.''
Another admirer of Kotelawala's supposed Bandung conquest was the West. When he returned home from the conference, Western ambassadors greeted him at the airport and the US ambassador Maxwell Henry Gluck reportedly complimented him on a job well done.
'Is it proper for the American Ambassador to treat our Prime Minister as a teacher who would treat a pupil what that pupil had carried out a particular piece of work creditably,' Senator Somasundaram Nadesan asked in parliament in response to the US ambassador's remarks.
Kotelawala remained unfazed and stepped up his anti-Nehru, anti-India rhetoric.
Media attacks
Chakravarty's information officer gave him a reason for this bitterness. He said the leading Ceylonese media proprietor Esmond Wickremesinghe (father of former president Ranil Wickremesinghe) had told him in a private conversation that Kotelawala's hatred of Nehru stemmed from the belief that the Indian prime minister deliberately sabotaged Ceylon-backed peace talks between the People's Republic of China and Taiwan.
Even newspapers that were critical of Kotelawala's foreign policy and pro-American views began to turn on India after the Bandung conference, something the Indian High Commission suspected was on account of government coercion.
'It is time that Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru was told where he gets off,' The Times of Ceylon said in an editorial. 'He was given the hint by Sir John who told him in effect in the face of half the world that he did not relish the role of Small Brother. It is quite apparent that the gentleman who has been posturing before young and pitifully credulous nations as the Grand Seigneur of Asian politics is suffering from political auto intoxication.'
When clippings of these articles and a political cartoon in the Ceylon Observer by the well-known Collette were sent to the Ministry of External Affairs, Foreign Secretary Subimal Dutt was not pleased. 'It would be absurd to expect any dispassionate consideration of outstanding issues between our two countries with people of this way of thinking,' he wrote to Chakravarty in a letter. 'The other side is not obviously in a mood to seek a reasonable settlement of the Indian problem.' This was a reference to the issue of citizenship for Indian-origin plantation workers on the island.
For his part, Chakravarty was justifiably sceptical of Goonetilleke's friendly overtures as it was the governor-general who had presented a gold medal on behalf of the island's Social Services League to Kotelawala in honour of his 'services' in Bandung.
American involvement
Meanwhile, the US kept working to keep both India and Ceylon free of communist influence. Declassified memos sent by the Indian High Commission in Colombo to the foreign ministry in New Delhi suggest that Americans took credit for the communists' failure to win the 1955 Andhra assembly election. These memos state that US officials visiting Colombo openly bragged about helping Nehru in the election, keeping the communists at bay.
The Americans were also keen to ensure there was no pan-Asian solidarity. In a letter to Foreign Secretary Subimal Dutt, Chakravarty wrote, 'The British have bases in Ceylon, which the US could always use in the event of a war. There was no special need therefore to draw Ceylon into the US sphere of influence, unless the object is to take her out of the influence of 'neutralist' India, and thereby weaken the growing Southeast Asian solidarity, which is not to the liking of Mr. [US Secretary of State John Foster] Dulles.'
When Chakravarty met Goonetilleke, he realised the full extent of American involvement with the Ceylonese government. 'This influence has become very considerable during the last year or so, because the Ambassador has been promising US aid,' Chakravarty wrote in his letter to the Indian foreign ministry. 'Apparently, he went even to the extent of telling the Prime Minister to take the American aid into account into framing the current year's budget!'
Chakravarty mentioned that nothing came out of the ambassador's promises and that Kotelawala considered him 'to be almost a buffoon'.
The Indian high commissioner believed there could be drastic changes in the island's foreign policy. 'It seems that they are going to wait for another few months to see what USA does,' Chakravarty wrote. 'At the end of that period, Ceylon may probably revise her policy. A policy of wooing China and the Soviet Union may then begin.'
He added that Kotelawala may visit the two communist giants. 'You may recall that the late Liaquat Ali Khan had once threatened to go to Moscow, and that led the Americans to take greater interest in Pakistan,' he wrote. 'Ceylon is perhaps hoping for the same result.'
In 1956, the United National Party lost the general election and Kotelawala retired from politics. One of the first geopolitical moves of SWRD Bandaranaike, who became prime minister of Ceylon, was to take over the British naval base in Trincomalee and remove British naval personnel from the island. After that, with their staunch ally out, the Americans could not get a stranglehold on the island.
A lot of the damage to India-Sri Lanka relations in the Kotelawala years was repaired after 1956, but then, another challenge emerged between them in the form of ethnic strife on the island.
Today, for the time being at least, the South Asian neighbours seem to have reached some sort of a meaningful understanding that they never enjoyed in the 1950s, but the US and China still continue to wrestle for influence in Sri Lanka.