Sri Lankan Trotskyist theoretician (1919?2012)
Hector Abhayavardhana
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Born
| 5 January 1919
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Died
| 22 September 2012
(2012-09-22)
(aged 93)
[1]
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Nationality
| Sri Lankan
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Occupation
| Theoretician
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Hector Abhayavardhana
(5 January 1919 – 22 September 2012) was a
Sri Lankan
Trotskyist
theoretician, a long-standing member of the
Lanka Sama Samaja Party
(LSSP) and a founder-member of the
Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India, Ceylon and Burma
.
[1]
Early life
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Abhayavardhana was born in
Kandy
where his maternal grandfather was an
Anglican
vicar - at a time when the
Church of England
was the established church. His father was a government servant and a pillar of the establishment.
Abhayavardhana was educated at
St Thomas' College, Mt. Lavinia
. His upbringing, being
anglicised
in culture and religion, was typical of the colonial
middle-class
and hence remote from the mass of
Sinhala
-speaking
Buddhist
people. He and his fellow
matriculation
student were once posed the question 'Would you have been better off under your own king?' by their teacher, in response to which he began to ponder upon
nationalism
and
British
colonial
rule.
At fifteen he renounced
Christianity
and became an
atheist
. In 1936 he joined
University College, Colombo
where he read liberal arts and came under the influence of
E.F.C. Ludowyk
and
Doric de Souza
, who had Marxist sympathies. He went on to complete his colonial education at the
Colombo Law College
.
Abhayavardhana's first exposure to radical politics was the
Bracegirdle incident
, in which the Colonial Government sought to deport an
Australian
labour activist. He attended a mass meeting at
Galle Face Green
on 5 May 1937 at Bracegirdle made a dramatic appearance and a stirring speech before being whisked away into hiding. At the time, his father was the Chief Clerk in the office of
Governor
Reginald Stubbs
, who sought the deportation and against whom this meeting was directed.
He organised the Mount Lavinia Debating Society, which invited such speakers as Dr.
Colvin R. de Silva
and
J. R. Jayewardene
.
Revolutionary
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Abhayavardhana was recruited to the
Lanka Sama Samaja Party
in 1940 by
Esmond Wickremesinghe
(later to be father of
Ranil Wickremasinghe
). He became part of the clandestine section of the LSSP that was established, in anticipation of its proscription, to work underground. After the party leaders were imprisoned and escaped to India he joined them in exile there (disguised as an Anglican priest) and worked in the Independence movement.
He became a member of the
Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India, Ceylon and Burma
(BLPI) and began his career as a writer. His two pamphlets 'The Saboteur Strategy of the Constructive Programme' and on the
Quit India
Movement of the
Congress Party
were considered to be seminal theoretical works. When the main LSSP leaders returned to Sri Lanka after the war, Abhayawardhana was among the Sama Samajists who remained in India.
Journalist
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]
He worked on the fortnightly
New Spark
in
Bombay
, later moving to
Chennai
. He became
General Secretary
of the
Socialist Party
which was created by the fusion in 1948 of the BLPI with the
Congress Socialist Party
. He moved to
New Delhi
where he was editor of the
Socialist Appeal
and contributor to the
Hindustan Standard
. He spent two years in
Hyderabad
editing
Mankind
before returning to New Delhi where he began the critical journal
Maral
.
Return to Sri Lanka
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In 1959 Abhayavardhana married
Kusala Fernando
and returned to Sri Lanka in 1960.
Abhayavardhana is credited with formulating the classification of the
Sri Lanka Freedom Party
(SLFP) as a
petty bourgeois
party, which was the ideological and theoretical foundation of the LSSP
Coalition
with that party in 1964. After this, he promoted an alliance with the SLFP and the
Communist Party
, which finally emerged with the signing of the Common Programme of the
United Front
in 1968.
Abhayavardhana started
The Nation
as an
English
organ of the United Front, serving as its editor. When the United Front formed a government in 1970 Hector served as Chairman of the
People's Bank
under Dr. N.M. Perera, the
Finance Minister
. After the front broke up in 1975, he founded the
Socialist Nation
. He also served on the Educational Bureau of the LSSP and was a long-standing member of the
Politburo
.
In August 1992 Abhayavardhana, along with
Vivienne Goonewardena
and
Bernard Soysa
was a guest of honour at the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Quit India movement in New Delhi.
Works
[
edit
]
- Hector Abhayavardhana,
Selected Writings
, Colombo, Social Scientists Association, 2001.
References
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External links
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