Rise and fall of ‘Abraham Lincoln of the East’

D.S. Senanayake

Continued From Last Tuesday

Then turning to Lord Soulbury, the mud-spattered farmer said “How do you do, my Lord? I read in the papers that you are here to give us a new Constitution. Good show! I hope it will be an enlightened and realistic one. Now let me see,” said, that farmer, his brow wrinkled in thought. “Wasn’t one of your forebears made an Earl in the sixteenth century, and didn’t a General, on your mother’s side of the family, fight beside Wellington at Waterloo? And you yourself, my Lord, are, I believe, the 11th Lord Soulbury?”

An amazed and dumbfounded Lord Soulbury tottered speechlessly back to the car and sank limply into the rear seat. The farmer followed him to the vehicle.

“By the way” continued the peasant. “I hear your Prime Minister Attlee is having some constitutional problems and a revolt is predicted in his newly formed Labour Government. But I wouldn’t worry. Attlee has some good men on his side, like Ernest Bevin and Anuerin Bevan. He’ll win through”, the farmer sighed. “But uncompromising colonist though he is, I am truly sorry old Winston Churchill was kicked out.”

“How do you know so much about my family history?” croaked Lords Soulbury, finding his voice at last.

The farmer chuckled. “Oh, we in little Ceylon keep in touch with what’s happening in Old Blighty, and when I read that you were coming to our fair isle I looked you up in Burke’s Peerage – one of my favourite books. By the way my Lord, a few days ago, I read a critical analysis of Beethovan’s Fifth Symphony by the celebrated contemporary music critic, Gensher. What do you think of Gensher’s views?”

“Mr. Senanayake, I really think we should be on our way,” gasped a visibly shaken Lord Soulbury. “Goodbye, my dear chap, so nice meeting you”.

“It was a privilege meeting the scion of a noble family such as yours, my Lord”, said the farmer, courteously closing the door of the limousine. “Goodbye, my Lord! Goodbye, Mr. Senanayake!”

“That mud-spattered, dignified farmer of regal bearing was no other person than that redoubtable Barrister-at-Law, (later knighted by Her Majesty the Queen), Cabinet Minister, Diplomat, and gentleman par excellence, Sir Edwin Wijeratne, who had been “planted”, in the paddy field by D.S.

For those interested in numerology, when D.S.’s son, Dudley, joined his father’s Cabinet, D.S. was 63 and Dudley 36. There is an ancient prophecy that one day a leader (Messiah), who will be called ‘Diyasena Kumaraya’, would be born in Sri Lanka and that he would free us from bondage. Some believed that Diayasena was D.S. Senanayake. To prove it, they keep intoning D.S. Senanayake… D. S. Senanayake above 25 times without a break. It begins to sound like Diyasena.

Soon after he became Prime Minister, in 1947, a Nayaka Thera (of whom are many these days, with some talking through the hat) met D.S. and made some demands. D.S. listened patiently for a while and told the Thera that he could not possibly introduce a sixth precept to the already existing five precepts in the form of “Aanduwa Saranang Gachchami”. (Taking refuge in the government).

One day, one of D.S.’s senior officials went to see the Prime Minister, accompanied by his little son. After gazing at D.S. for some time, the boy had very audibly asked his father, “Who is that old man with the moustache?” The acutely embarrassed official had apologized to the Prime Minister for his son’s rudeness, and D.S. had replied that he was a grandfather and he loved the naive comments of children. “As a matter of fact,” D.S. had said with a twinkle in his eye, “my moustache is my grand children’s favourite plaything!.

Many of us may not have agreed with him, politically, but even D.S.’s greatest political enemies (he never had any other kind), never accused him of chicanery, humbug, double-dealing, dishonesty, shilly-shallying, opportunism or any other such questionable qualities. No wonder Sir John Kotalawela, who virtually grew up under his benevolent eyes, had the same qualities as the old Man.

In the early days of the Minneriya Scheme, D.S. went on a tour of inspection, on foot, accompanied by some of his officials. At one place, a stream that was usually forded on foot, as the water hardly came up to a man’s knees, was a roaring swirl of water as there had been heavy rains the night before. When his officials suggested turning back, D.S. grinned, “I say, a little water never hurt anybody,” and stripping off his clothes, held the bundle well over his head and began crossing the steam. His officials had no alternative but to follow suit.

When Sir Robert Menzies, then Prime Minister of Australia, paid an official visit to Ceylon, Prime Minister D.S. was at the Ratmalana Airport to receive him. But instead of the formal “Welcome to Sri Lanka, Your Excellency”, D.S. said heartily, “Hullo, Robert! You are five minutes early!” D.S. was always a man who spoke from the heart.

Even while he was Premier, D.S. used to go to a humble barber-salon, close to his house, for his haircut. He would take his place with the other customers, and once when one of them offered the PM his turn, D.S. politely declined saying the other was there first. He could very easily have got the barber down to his residence, but to D.S. this was one way he could meet the people who really mattered to him – the ordinary man in the street.

Once an inspections of a state farm had been fixed for 8 am, but D.S. walked into the place unannounced at 6 a.m. to the surprise of a camp surveyor who was about to go to the field. The surveyor went up to receive the Premier, and D.S, who had once worked in the Survey Department, questioned the man closely about how a survey was done, and at the end of it, told the elated surveyor that he, the Prime Minister, had learnt a lot that day.

Once D.S. was at a conference with the GA of the district, G. K. Thornhill, the Surveyor General, and two of D.S.’s close ‘collaborators’, R. L. Brohier and L.G.O. Woodhouse, both very high officials in the Survey Department. D.S. was the Minister of Agriculture and Lands in the State Council. Suddenly, a message was brought to him that a very agitated villager wished to see him. Excusing himself, D.S. left the conference, and went out and spoke to the villager. Then sitting on the bar of the man’s cycle, he went with him and settled the man’s problem.

When D.S. was Premier, a very influential personage asked him for a Mudliyarship. But D.S., with good reason, refused. A few years later, D.S. was at a village function, with the unsuccessful applicant for the Mudliyarship in the chair. One of the speakers, at the meeting, pointed to the Chariman, and said, “I wish to thank the Prime Minister for offering our village VIP a Mudliyarship. But our man is not interested in that sort of thing and he had refused the honour!” At this D.S. had chuckled heartily and whispered to a neighbour. “That is the next best thing to a Mudliyarship”.

One day D.S. took Lord Soulbury to one of his pet colonization schemes, and noticing that the colonists had far too many children. Soulbury suggested that he provide them with electricity. “Electricity” said the Lordship in his fruity tones. “Has a very restraining effect on the production of children?”

When D.S. was Lord Soulbury’s guest in England. They motored down to the zoo. There D.S. heard that there was an elephant from Ceylon at the place. D.S. sought out the animal, and going up to it, said a few words in ‘elephant language’. The beast immediately trumpeted loudly and held up its curled trunk to D.S. in salute. Everyone present was most impressed.

My earliest recollection of D.S. was when he presided at the annual UNP session, which was held in Galle that year. I was then a schoolboy and I could not but marvel at the way this larger than life personage handled the sometimes fiery and acrimonious sessions, with skill and diplomacy, the latter a quality he wasn’t generally credited with, very unfairly, I think.

As the session commenced, D.S. pointed to a red light that was rigged over the rostrum and said that when the light went on, the person holding the floor must stop speaking and resume his seat. The light was blinding, and even if the speaker wanted a continue he would have found it quite uncomfortable to do so. The red light came on many times during the session and I was curious to find out who operated it. During the lunch break, I ventured on to the deserted platform and scouted around, and there, under D.S.’s table was a foot switch.

The next time, I saw him was during the Colombo Plan Exhibition. My father, with his signature Jaffna-cigar stuck in his mouth, was taking our family around when we had to move off the path to make away for an open car going round the exhibition ground. Seated in the car were Prime Minister D.S. Senanayake and Sir Oliver Goonetilleke. Seeing D.S, my father respectfully plucked his cigar out of his mouth. D.S. saw the gesture and stopping the car, exchanged a few, cordial words with my father, who was a total stranger to him. That was D.S. all over; the man with the common touch.

One evening, a student of Richmond College, Galle, after a game of cricket, with a bat in his hand was on his way to the railway station where his father was the station master.

All of a sudden, a shiny limousine stopped and a voice from inside asked in English, how to proceed to Mahinda College? The boy gave the necessary directions, in impeccable English. As the driver could not exactly understand what he said and as they were already getting late, the boy was taken in the car as a guide.

After the car arrived at Mahinda College, where there was a waiting crowd, the visitor was heavily garlanded. The boy came to know that the visitor was none other than D.S. Senanayake, the Prime Minister, only after he saw the pandal that had been erected.

D.S. then introduced the boy with the bat as the one who guided them to the school. He, too was then garlanded. This boy was non other than Alec Robertson, who was later to become a Buddhist leader. And, D.S. would never have dreamt that the boy would one day be an MP from his own party.

One day, a friend of D.S, quite agitated, came to see him. “What is this? The leftist fellows are going all over the country saying that the so-called Independence is a fake, as the British continue to have their military bases here.” This is what D.S, told his friend. “The Tamils want to have their share of the national pie. The present Tamil leaders are cultured men of peace and they will never try extra parliamentary methods to achieve it. S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, who has left us now, with his Sinhala only cry and due place for Buddhism, is going to unleash forces that even he won’t be able to control and this country would go up in flames. Then a new set of Tamil youths, sick of the supineness of their old leaders, are going to have an armed showdown with the government and its forces. And, the British are here to protect the democratically elected government of Ceylon in such event.”

A Cabinet meeting was held, on March 20, 1952. After the meeting, the Premier entertained the ministers and the secretaries to lunch at the Senate Refreshment Room. But there were only 13 present. This figure 13 irked Minister E.A. Nugaweia, also present. His thoughts drifted to the Last Supper with a premonition of disaster. The next morning, while on horseback, D.S, who excelled in horsemanship, fell off his horse and passed away. Of interest is the fact that it was not his horse, Amber, he rode that day but a Police horse named Chitra. No one who lived during that fateful day, March 22, 1952, will ever forget the pall of gloom, and despair that hung over the country when the news of his death was announced. Like Sir Robert Peel, a Prime Minister of England, D.S., too, died after a fall off a horse.

The news came to us in Galle at about 3.30 p.m. that day, during the much looked forward to Richmond-Mahinda big match, and it was immediately decided that the match be abandoned. But, I’m sorry to say, other prestigious schools that were also playing their matches, perfunctorily observed two minutes silence and merrily carried on. D.S. Senanayake deserved a better tribute than that.

Paying a tribute to him, the Galle MP.W. Dahanayake, said, “Considering the fact that some other countries resorted to civil disobedience and violence to achieve Independence from the British, D.S. is the greatest Sri Lankan since 1505.” He added, “I entered the State Council in 1944 and from that time, I have known him for eight years. All that time I was a vociferous critic of the government policies, save that of agriculture. As a Member of the Opposition, I have seen the Galoya Project and verily believe that he is an incarnation of Parakrama Bahu the Great.”

Talking of tributes, the greatest tribute to the fallen warrior came from the American Press, who called him ‘the Abraham Lincoln of the East.”