Sinhalese Buddhist leaders were no more satisfied with the reality of independence than those who spoke for the minorities. In their eyes, the grant of Dominion status had failed to secure for their community the first place in society they believed it was entitled to by right of majority. The Soulbury Constitution had created a secular, democratic state in which all citizens had an equal position regardless of race, creed or caste; it did not even recognize ethnic or religious groups as political entities. To those who chose to understand ‘majority rule’ as the award of untrammelled power to the most numerous ethnic group, the fact that neither the constitution nor the government recognized their special status was manifestly unfair.

       Language – as foreshadowed in the State Council education debate – was the principal cause of their dissatisfaction. The demand to make Sinhala the official language of state (along with, or without, Tamil) had become the key nationalist issue. At the ceremonial opening of Parliament, MPs wishing to speak in Sinhala had been informed that it was impossible because there were no stenographers proficient in the language to record their words for Hansard. A month later, J.R. Jayewardene, the Minister of Finance, was prevented from making his budget speech in Sinhala for the same reason. Not until July was the language of the majority admitted to the House of Representatives; perhaps fittingly, the honour of delivering the first speech in his people’s tongue fell to none other than S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike.

       Questions of language would soon be given the greatest importance by Sinhalese Buddhist groups such as the All-Ceylon Buddhist Congress, the Buddhist Theosophical Society and Bandaranaike’s own Sinhala Maha Sabha. The exclusion of Sinhala from Parliament was the least of their grievances; far more objectionable was the fact that the laws of the land were still written exclusively in English and that the courts, too, functioned only in that language. There was real substance to these complaints, which raised important questions about human rights and the administration of justice. Another grievance, less serious perhaps but more irksome to the ordinary, law-abiding citizen, was the continued exclusive use of English in government offices and banks, and by the postal and telegraphic services.

       Other Sinhalese Buddhist cavils were, perhaps, less justified. One was the continued existence of Christian private schools, which took up the lion’s share of state subsidies for education while promoting an ‘alien’ faith and culture. Another was the continuing, legal operation of distilleries, taverns, gambling establishments and slaughterhouses, which promoted activities frowned upon by Buddhist moralists. Politicians might regard language as the most important nationalist issue, but to bikkhus and the Sinhala-educated middle classes or ‘provincial elite’, these everyday manifestations of foreign vice, so attractive to Buddhists conventionally deemed ‘innocent’, were reliable triggers of moral panic and indignation.

       The trappings of Dominion status were further cause for complaint. The King of England remained the country’s nominal head of state and the Union Jack was flown together with the Lion Flag at all state functions. More substantially, Ceylon, though now free to make her own domestic and foreign policy, was in many ways still subordinate to Britain in world affairs and depended on defence agreements with the UK to protect her from foreign enemies. British contingents still occupied the military bases at Trincomalee and Katunayake. The court of final appeal under Ceylonese justice remained the Privy Council of the United Kingdom. These marks of continuing dependence, so reassuring to Westernized, secular-minded Ceylonese, stuck in the craw of Leftists and Sinhalese nationalists alike. To them – as to many foreign observers – the UNP-led government was merely a puppet regime, wholly in thrall to external interests.

       Even Sinhalese nationalists within the UNP had begun to lose patience with the government. D.S. Senanayake’s hemin, hemin policy they now condemned as a stalling tactic; his appointment, that year, of a National Languages Commission to inquire into the questions they raised was dismissed as mere eyewash. The appointment of the notorious Warden de Saram of St Thomas’s College as one of the commissioners merely served to confirm this judgement.

       Among the malcontents, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike was by far the most prominent. Years before, he had hoped to succeed Senanayake as party leader and Prime Minister of independent Ceylon, but for years he had watched others – Sir Oliver Goonetilleke, Sir John Kotelawala and Senanayake’s own elder son Dudley among them – successively supplant him (and one another) in the great man’s regard. Now, as the wave of Sinhalese Buddhist political agitation rose higher, he began to see a future for himself beyond Senanayake’s penumbra, in a place where his own light might shine the brighter. His Sinhala Maha Sabha could fairly claim to be the legitimate Parliamentary representative of Sinhalese Buddhist interests; and Sinhalese Buddhists were by far the largest community in the country. If he could only unite them into an electoral force, what need had he of the slow-moving, quarrelsome, increasingly corrupt UNP?