Independence has been a long mirage in geostrategic Ceylon/ Sri Lanka where history seems to repeat itself as tragedy and farce in equal measure. This week, the geostrategic Indian Ocean island is set to mark 77 years of faux Independence from the British Raj. There will be much pomp and pageantry to mask the fact that the country is caught in a neocolonial Eurobond US dollar debt trap and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), bailout business at this time.
The island effectively lost Economic Sovereignty to the lender of Last Resorts amid a staged Sovereign Default to Eurobond holders of the colonial Club de Paris and the Club of London bankers. That was three years ago in 2022 on the eve of its purported 75th Independence Day celebration.
This year, February 4th Independence day, would be marked with great pomp. 80 million rupees have been allocated for the fanfare and ceremonial. Preparatory work including security detail for the political elite and diplomat corps had been ongoing for months at Independence Square in Cinnamon Gardens.
The hollow celebration of 77 years of Independence this year would bear an eerie semblance to its very first Independence day when famous ‘Pageant of Ceylon’ was staged on February 4, 1948. That was when the British Crown Colony of Ceylon morphed into a ‘British Dominion’ — sans genuine Independence. After all, London still controlled the strategic Indian Ocean island’s ports, airports, plantations, justice and courts system. The island’s ceremonial head of state, the Governor General was appointed by the Queen of England.
Ceylon’s Independence on February 4, 1948 was enacted for bemused natives, sans real sovereignty or the Right to Self-determination of colonized peoples; and never mind the question of territorial integrity. The deepsea Trincomalee harbor was still home to the Royal Navy’s Eastern Command until 1958 when Prime Minister S.W.R.D Bandaranaike nationalized it. He was assassinated in September 1959. Nor was the United Nation Charter’s Article 2.7 affirmation on interventions within ‘the domestic jurisdiction of States’ on the Independence agenda in 1948.
The colourful Independence Pageant of Ceylon that converted the British Crown Colony of Ceylon into a ‘British Dominion’ on February 4, 1948 was a façade. The ceremonial served to mask and camouflage with colorful cultural traditions, spectacular dances, pomp and circumstance the fact that London still held substantial power and effectively controlled the Parliament of Ceylon where much of the debate was scripted in London, as much as, by the colonial comprador elite, literati and glitterati present at the independence show.
Real Independence in 1972
Perhaps the Whig imperial historian Sir John Seeley who famously remarked that “the British Empire happened in a fit of absence of mind” was right after all! The British empire seemed to exist in suspended animation long after official Independence in 1948, also with clandestine GLADIO-style ‘stay behind’ secret service operations. These operations have been detailed in by Swiss historian Daniele Ganser in his book “NATO’s Secret Armies”, which are comparable to the current Sword of Damocles suspended over the natives of Paradise Lost in the form of the Eurobond debt trap that has debilitated the country’s economic sovereignty and eroded its territorial integrity at this time, also with cyber operations.
Arguably that first Independence Day ceremony on a bright February morning in 1948 masked yet another face and phase of (neo)colonialism in the island. Indeed, it was the world’s first woman head of State, Socialist Sirimavo Bandaranaike, who delivered a modicum of genuine Independence to Ceylon/ Sri Lanka on May 22, 1972, nearly 25 years after the faux Independence ‘Pageant of Ceylon’ that rendered the country a “British Dominion” on February 4 1948.
Sri Lanka became a Republic in 1972 amid much nay-saying by the colonial comprador bourgeois’ brown sahibs and memsahibs, invested in the colonial economy, and remarkably after the abortive 1971 Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) insurrection. The county adopted its first Republican Constitution and its name changed to Sri Lanka from the colonial Ceylon– as part of becoming Independent. By then, all the ports and airports, plantations and energy companies had been or were being nationalized, a process that was later sabotaged as in other Afro-Asian neo-colonies.
The first Socialist Prime Minister, SWRD Bandaranaike, assassinated in Operation Colombo in 1959 had paid the highest price for nationalizing the geostrategic island’s Trincomalee and other ports, particularly, Galle and Colombo. that remain the focus of big power competition.
Regardless, the week of Sri Lanka’s purported 77th Independence show will progress with little talk about the meaning of independence, sovereignty, the self-determination of peoples of the Global South, or neocolonialism. There will be not mention of the country’s recent, patent loss of economic sovereignty to the IMF, and impoverishment of its people due to rapid local currency depreciation against the exorbitantly privileged US dollar, or the just concluded odious debt Eurobond exchange to benefit unnamed Eurobond holders.
Sri Lanka’s purported 77th Independence day will be another ceremony, a welcome holiday, bread and circuses for an Anglophile elite and the vernacular masses, alike. The pomp and pageantry would no doubt gloss a darker reality, the peoples’ impoverishment and the ‘pumping and dumping’ of the country with various exogenous economic shocks including mysterious Islamic State (ISIS) claimed terror attacks in 2019 to “Make the Economy Scream”, during the long march to real Independence.
Independence day with all its pageantry and pomp would in short be once again more or less irrelevant; much like the recently concluded second edition of the Raj Nostalgia, Ceylon Literary Festival (CLF), held at the Colombo Public Library. CLF’s organizers and sponsors clearly preferred the colonial appellation ‘Ceylon’ to the more Independent Sri Lanka. There was no talk at the CLF about Eurobond debt neocolonialism, the new Cold War in South Asia or regime change operations amid hybrid war operations in “the Asian 21st Century” that is set to make Euro-America irrelevant.
Nor was there mention of ongoing tectonic geopolitical power shifts across the Indian Ocean and to the Global South and the rise of the BRICS at the CLF. Of course, the CLF’ principle sponsor was the London headquatered Hong Kong and Shanghi Bank, which is one of the beneficiaries of Sri Lanka’s USD-Euro bondage and related derivatives.
From GLADIO to Operation Colombo: The Afro-Asian Neo-colony
With the wisdom of hindsight, as well as, new research based on de-classified material and evidence from various archives, including the British Archives and the US Library of Congress, it is now clear that when the British crown colony of Ceylon morphed into a British Dominion with the spectacular Pageant of Ceylon in 1948, her people’s long struggle for genuine Independence, national sovereignty, territorial integrity and the right to self-determination had only just begun.
Indeed, Ceylon/ Sri Lanka’s struggle for Independence continues to this day, amid GLADIO-style “stay behind’ clandestine operations by British, and later US and NATO special forces. GLADIO “stay behind” operations against Communists and Socialists in Europe as the Cold War between the Axis powers and Soviet Union ramped up, have been extensively described in the brilliant work of Swiss Historian, Daniele Ganser, among others. Similar stay behind operations were employed to deliver “shocks” to the natives in Afro-Asian post/colonies like Sri Lanka, to divide, distract, and “Make the Economy Scream’, ensure Communism and Socialism was kept at bay, and Euro-American economic and security interests protected.
Gladio-style secret operations in the Global South and Non-Aligned World certainly included ‘Operation Colombo’, enacted in 1973 in Santiago de Chile during the US Central Intelligence Agency instigated coup that saw the death of South America’s first Socialist head of State, President Salvador Allende in 1973. Operation Colombo likely also saw the murder of Chilean Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda. Meanwhile, a colonial model and pattern of dependent economic development and under-development was cultivated with the corporation of the local comprador elite in the Afro-Asian world fighting for genuine Independence.
As the British Dominion of Ceylon (1948-1972) struggled to gain real independence from the retreating British Empire while the rising US empire sought to capitalize on Britain’s demise, there were Cold War assassinations of Socialist heads of state and governments: President S.W.R.D Bandaranaike (1959), an attempted military coup (1962), and insurrections by purportedly leftist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), segments of which were surmised to be backed by imperial powers– ironically against the ruling Socialist Sirimavo Bandaranaike government (1971). This was much as in other post-colonies in Asia and Africa.
The JVP uprising of 1971 was remarkably timed to stymie passage of the first Republican Constitution to end Ceylon’s British Dominion status and render Sri Lanka a fully independent state in September 1972 under the ruling Socialist Sirimavo Bandaranaike government.
Of course the long ‘ethnic conflict’ from 1983 to 2009, between Sinhala and Tamil speaking peoples of Lanke, who had lived together for centuries and inter-married for generations, was as much part of a shadow proxy war in the wider South Asian subcontinent, as regional Cold war unfolded, weaponizing ethno-religious tensions among diverse communities: The Cold war in South Asian took the form of shadow wars between regional hegemon, India, then as now closely allied with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR/ Russia), and the Axis powers (Britain, France and US) which feared the Domino effect of communism sweeping through the Global South, as much as, the Soviet Union. Pakistan after Partition had been turned into a CIA Garrison State. Thus India weaponized tensions between northern Tamils against likely British American military bases being set up in Ceylon once J.R Jayawardene came to power in Southern Sri Lanka.
As Ceylon/ Sri Lanka, struggled for real independence and national sovereignty amid Cold War shadow wars and Gladioesque operations, there were numerous attempted and more of less successful regime change operations in the geostrategic island, the most recent being in 2022, and 2024.
Research by Swiss historian, Daneil Ganzer has detailed how secret operations, code named GLADIO and shadow wars were conducted in Europe against socialist and communist movements by the predecessor organization of the US CIA.
Similarly, new research by the American historian and journalist Vincent Bevin, author of ‘The Jakarta Method’, and British political scientist Phil Miller (Keenie Meenie: The British Mercenaries who got away with War crimes), based on de-classified documents of the British Foreign Office and Library of Congress show similar patterns of staged, false flag operations, to destroy genuine socialist and communist de-colonization, national liberation and Independence movements in the Global South, by secret service agencies of the retreating European and rising US empires, past and present. This was as Britain and America sought to retain their economic and security interests in resource rich African and Asian countries amid new and old Cold War proxy wars in the de-colonizing global South.
Back to the future, in 2022: On the eve of Sri Lanka’s 75th birthday there was little talk that South Asia’s wealthiest country in terms of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) and all the metrics that matter, was subjected to a first ever Sovereign Default to the colonial Club de Paris and the London Club of bankers and bondholders, with citizens dramatically impoverished due to a purported lack of exorbitantly privileged Eurodollars amid Economic Lawfare staged by the Hamilton Reserve Bank (HRB) in New York as a New Cold War, includin hybrid economic war escalated in the Indian Ocean Region.
History indeed would be repeating itself this February 4th as Sri Lanka once again marks Independence Day.
(To be continued)
Dr. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake is a social and medical anthropologist with research expertise in international development and political economic analysis. She was a member of the International Steering Group on “Southern Perspectives on Reform of the International Development Architecture”
