Posted on April 29th, 2021
KAMALIKA PIERIS
SWRD Bandaranaike was
assassinated in 1959. This was followed by two attempts to remove his successor,
Sirimavo. First, the failed coup of 1962
and second, the JVP insurgency of 1971. The 1971
rebellion was the first armed uprising against the state.
Mano
Ratwatte, son of Mackie Ratwatte, Private Secretary to Prime Minister Sirimavo,
recalls that in January 1966, at a political rally the Air Force guard had threatened to open fire
on Prime Minister Sirimavo and Dr. Baduiddin Mohammed.
The 1971 JVP
insurgency has been described as a romantic, innocent revolution, an unplanned
spontaneous attack. It was nothing of the sort. It was pre-planned and well
LankaWeb – THE GENERAL ELECTION OF 1956 Part 11
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The JVP s Military Battle for Power – The Island
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By Jayantha Somasundaram
The 50th anniversary of the first JVP insurrection falls today. The 1971 rebellion was the first armed uprising against the state in modern times.
The JVP was the brainchild of Rohana Wijeweera. Born in 1943, at Hunandeniya, in the Matara District, his father was a supporter of the Communist Party of Ceylon (CPC). However, while studying medicine in Moscow, Wijeweera became critical of the Soviet Union, and, on his return, he joined the Communist Party (CP), which was Maoist. Not long after, in 1966, Wijeweera, along with his supporters, broke ranks with the CP to form their own movement, which would later become the JVP. Wijeweera had concluded that the agricultural labourer -̶ the rural proletariat -̶ was the largest and most important component of Sri Lanka’s working class, not the urban or plantation worker.
Yet More About the Burghers of Ceylon/ Sri Lanka
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