- Linnean Medallist and public policy advocate Rohan Pethiyagoda on the narrow-minded idea of Independence that Sri Lankans have perpetuated from 1948
With Sri Lanka marking Independence Day on 4 February, we paused to ask the harder questions. What does Independence truly mean — and are we using it well? On Kaleidoscope, Linnean Medal winner and public policy advocate Rohan Pethiyagoda, in a no-holds barred discussion, challenged assumptions about freedom, responsibility and the unfinished business of nationhood.
Following are excerpts of the interview:
In Sinhala, Independence Day is translated to Nidahas Dinaya which translates to Freedom Day. Are we talking about the same idea, or are we confused as a people?
To the extent to which we refer to nidahas adhyapanaya as free education, it does mean the same thing because that doesn’t mean very much either. Parents are not getting free education for their children; they are getting education that is free of charge.
Freedom in the context of Independence didn’t make a lot of sense because, of course, technically we are free of the coloniser, which was the British empire, but, whether we are enjoying true freedom, is the question often unanswered.
We gained Independence… but from whom - The British, global power structures, debt, our political class, or our habits of thinking?
It was something else altogether. It was an Independence from responsibility. Let’s play a little mind game. Imagine that we woke up tomorrow morning and found that we had no national debt, overseas debt, and local debt. Somehow, a fairy godmother had erased all the debt, and then somebody had come and put into the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) enough foreign exchange for us to run the country for the next year without charging a cent in backdoor taxes or anything. In today’s money, that’s US $ 11 billion.
So, assume that happened tomorrow morning, and we had $ 11 billion in the CBSL; no debts, inflation running at two per cent, and exporting more than we import. You have a dream opportunity to build Sri Lanka into the most prosperous country on the planet. And then, within 10 years, we squander all that and we end up with massive debts, a collapsing economy and social unrest. That’s pretty much what we got.
When the British left in 1948, they left us with, at that time, Pounds 50 million in the bank. That Pounds 50 million was enough to run the country for a year. We were exporting more than we imported. Our Rupee was tied to the Indian Rupee (INR). Now, it’s one-third of the value of the INR, and we got ourselves a total loss.
If a country can’t protect its own ecosystem, language, diversity or institutional integrity, can it honestly call itself Independent?
It cannot. Of course, you are Independent to the extent that a mad person is Independent. But, when you look at the fourth factor, which you didn’t mention — how you get food in your mouth, how do we get prosperity? We lost out on that opportunity because we squandered it right at the very outset.
At the very beginning, what did the first 10 years after Independence involve? It involved Governments, first of all, disabling and encroaching on the private sector by doing the things that the private sector would normally do. We set up corporations for everything that you see around you. There was a Cement Corporation, a Steel Corporation, a Leather Corporation, a Textile Corporation, a Salt Corporation, a Paper Corporation, a Sugar Corporation, a Tyre Corporation… you name it, and we had a corporation for it. Where did this end?
The whole economy was just grabbed. And who was it grabbed by? By politicians who were completely incompetent. Not one of them had run a business or been a success in life.
Is there any Nation that can call itself truly Independent?
No, of course not. You are never Independent. You have your allies, friends, enemies, and rivals. And, it’s within that context that one is Independent. It’s just like we as humans aren’t Independent either. We are dependent on our wider social ecosystem.
So, is sovereignty without stewardship an illusion?
It is entirely an illusion. And that is the message we need to get — that we became our own enemy in a totally empowered State and a disempowered people.
Even today, where is the freedom when the State owns 80% of the land in Sri Lanka? There are 1.2 million Sri Lankans who live on land under permits. They don’t have titles — 1.2 million people. Our tea industry is dominated by smallholders. Most of them don’t own the land they cultivate. A total of 400,000 smallholders keep this industry alive.
On the one hand, we are educating people through a wonderful free education system to be citizens of the world. On the other, we tell them that you can’t really own any land. How can people — rice farmers or tea smallholders — integrate themselves into local value chains by operating like that?
A total of 70-plus years on, what has Sri Lanka done wrong in interpreting Independence?
We interpreted Independence wrong from the get-go, by seeing it as freedom from colonialism as opposed to a responsibility to be the custodians of our own future. And there, we really let our children and grandchildren down. We are the heirs of those first three generations of losers who borrowed money hand over fist and then decided that they couldn’t pay it back after all. They left it to us to pay it back.
This responsibility comes with choices — sometimes, very uncomfortable choices. Do you see these choices being made by the powers that be?
No. I think SriLankan Airlines is a really good example of this. We are still losing money.
Even in 2026, the Government allocated Rs. 20 billion — Rs. 20 billion paid, after all, by many people who have never been on an aeroplane before, by farmers who pay Value Added Tax, for example, to run this loss-making enterprise that has now lost more than Rs. 600 billion, and we still keep pumping money into this. Why do we do that? Because shutting down the SriLankan Airlines, which is the logical thing, cannot be done.
The thing is, if you’ve got a cancer, you excise it surgically. Shutting down the SriLankan Airlines is the most logical thing to do. But, you can’t do it because the people don’t want you to. Because they want to feel like the proud, free, Independent owners of a national carrier, even though it makes colossal losses.
Sri Lanka as a Nation has been obsessed with this post-colonial grievance. Does that prevent us from asking the harder questions about our own failures?
What is the basis of this post-colonial freedom? In 1948, when we got Independence, we were the envy of the world. We were the most prosperous country in Asia. We were the most prosperous country after Japan and Malaysia in the whole of Asia. In South Asia, we were obviously ahead of India by leaps and bounds. And despite having that wonderful opportunity — of prosperity, order, an expert Judiciary, and a very competent civil service — it just took us 10 years to get from there to race riots in 1958, to the Sinhala Only policy in 1956 and the nationalisation of just about everything.
If you think about it, in those first 10 years, nationalisation was a crisis. These politicians had just got their hands-on power, something they greedily grabbed with their little paws. They nationalised ports, petroleum, plantations, transport, education, etc. The whole idea of having diverse education was destroyed by that first generation.
What would you have done in 1948, when that piece of paper was signed that gave Sri Lanka — or Ceylon at the time — Independence?
I would have made it an absolute meritocracy. A meritocracy hurts at the beginning because it seems so unfair that people who don’t have the competence to do certain things are not allowed to do them. But, if you have a meritocracy, you have excellence. That was how Singapore came to be what it is.
Sri Lanka and Singapore are not comparable — that’s a city-State, we are a nation-state. That’s chalk and cheese. But, at the same time, countries that have meritocracies tend to do much better than those that don’t. When you have people of merit doing the right things, when you choose the best person for every single job – then, that rising tide tends to float all boats.
Patriotism and nationalism — do we confuse all this with Independence?
Yes, we do. We make ourselves the victims rather than the architects of our destiny. We often have this idea the British divided and ruled. But, are we just pieces on a chessboard that can be divided and ruled? We were not victims. It was we who chose to be divided and ruled.
If you think about British power in Sri Lanka, at the height of the colonial enterprise, at the outbreak of the First World War in 1912–1913, the British had only 1,000 people with arms in Sri Lanka, that’s all. The Sri Lankans were completely complicit with that. We didn’t go and slaughter them in their beds. We could have strangled every one of them if we wanted to. But, we were part of the colonial enterprise. So, what did we get freedom from? We got freedom just to make the choices that the British wouldn’t let us make — like spending more than we earned.
Are we a subservient Nation to the colonists?
No, and I certainly don’t espouse colonialism; I think that it’s a terrible idea. But, colonialism instilled in us a sense of responsibility. And Independence only gave us the freedom of the wild not to be responsible. We chose not to be responsible.
If you had to challenge Sri Lankans with one uncomfortable truth in relation to Independence Day, what would it be?
The idea of the freedom we think we have, which is illusory. That’s important to appreciate. We talk about patriotism, about loving this country, and at the same time, we force our children to go and live in other countries. Nobody wants their children to grow up in Sri Lanka. We don’t have aspirations or ambitions for Sri Lanka. We’ve given up on this country and that’s why people flee this country.
It’s like Sri Lanka was Eritrea or some kind of war zone — which it wasn’t — yet, people are running away from this country to live elsewhere. It’s because the country sucks. We’ve got to stop it from being that. We’ve got to have a country that we’re proud of. Because this is heaven on earth. It is Sri Lanka.
The writer is the host, director, and co-producer of the weekly digital programme ‘Kaleidoscope with Savithri Rodrigo’ which can be viewed on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. She has over three decades of experience in print, electronic, and social media
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The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication