So, the Republic of India doesn’t shy away from claiming territory—it has 36 different
subdivisions that cover well over a million square miles of land—and if it had its way,
it would have even more from Pakistan and China.
Yet, off its southern coast lies an island with a plethora of historical and cultural
ties to the Indian mainland, but that the republic doesn’t own or even claim.
Which begs the question: why did that island become an independent, self-governing nation,
and not an Indian state?
Why is it that India doesn’t own Sri Lanka?
Well, as you probably know, both India and Sri Lanka were colonized by the British Empire,
which called Sri Lanka "Ceylon."
As with India though, the British weren’t the only Europeans interested in the island,
and first the Portuguese, and then later the Dutch, gained concessions from native
Sri Lankan kingdoms before Britain arrived.
Speaking of which, there are two main types of Sri Lankans:
the majority, Buddhist, Sinhalese, and the minority, Hindu, Tamils who live mostly in
the north of the country.
They also have a sizable population in southern India.
So before British rule began, in the early 1790s, the Sri Lankan coast was controlled
by the Dutch Republic, and the Sinhalese Kingdom of Kandy ruled the mountainous interior.
But back in Europe, the 1790s were a… chaotic time, and the Dutch soon found themselves
subservient to revolutionary France.
Which was fighting Britain, which now had a reason to be interested in Sri Lanka.
They drove out the Dutch and established the colony of British Ceylon in 1796, and the
timing there is critical.
At the end of the 18th century, much of India was under British control, however, it wasn’t
the British government, the Crown, that wielded power on the ground, rather it was a publicly
traded business: the British East India Company.
The new colony of Ceylon, on the other hand,
had a governor that was directly appointed from London.
By 1817 British Ceylon covered all of Sri Lanka.
Britain had fought three wars against Kandy; the first of which ended in stalemate after
a Kandyan-inflicted British bloodbath, but the next saw the last Kandyan king,
Sri Vikrama Rajasinha, deposed by the British and many
of his own nobles who sided against him.
The King was a Tamil, while most of the aristocracy
was Sinhalese.
Finally, the third war saw Britain defeat the very chiefs who had aided them; they were
upset that Britain had, you know, used them to take over their island.
In contrast to India, which, under the auspices of the East India Company, was largely ruled
by Indians themselves, albeit the EIC generally appointed Muslim governors to rule a primarily
Hindu population, Sri Lanka was administered by, and for, Brits.
British law was imposed on the island, and after a decade or two of relative religious
toleration, Britain also began to attempt to enforce Anglicanism on the Sri Lankans.
The company did have some power there though, notably, they controlled the cinnamon trade,
however unlike the on the mainland, they were not in the business of governing.
All though, to be honest, they weren't really in that business in India either, at least
not effectively; the EIC was really in the
business of, well, doing business, not stable governance.
Which caused some rather pressing issues, that culminated in the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny.
The Sepoys were Indian mercenaries hired by the East India Company; obviously, that was
cheaper than shipping in armies from Europe,
and actually, the Crown hired Sepoys in Sri Lanka as well.
Why did the Indian Sepoys rebel, well they were generally treated poorly by the company,
but the final straw was the issuing to them
of firearms that were greased with pork lard and beef tallow.
That offended the religious sensibilities of Muslim and Hindu Sepoys respectively.
The rebellion proved the EIC incapable of maintaining order in India, so the Crown
took control of the subcontinent away from the company in 1858,
and created the British Raj to handle governance there.
Though it would retain a number of semi-autonomous Indian princedoms.
Britain’s Queen Victoria would later be styled “Empress of India,” and the Raj
would grow to include all of modern Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar.
So why then, given that both British Ceylon and the British Raj were under one state’s
control, and their relative geographic proximity, were they not put under one administration
in 1858?
Well, Ceylon wasn’t alone in being a separate British territory near the Raj
(both Nepal and Bhutan were also never a part of British India),
but they maintained some semblance of independence because it simply wasn’t worth the effort
to fully conquer them.
Ceylon, though, was already fully controlled by the UK, and the reason it wasn’t incorporated
into the Raj was that the British civil servants who ran India had no interest in the island.
Sri Lanka was then a cash-crop economy, but that made it so the food supply on the island
was not great.
Which led to famine among the majority Sinhalese (while the Tamils were more privileged and
were often given roles in the British government), and that, in combination with the Crown’s
continued attempts to squash Buddhism in favour of Christianity led to revolt in 1848.
That revolt wasn’t successful, well Britain did mostly lay off on the proselytizing, but
they certainly didn’t leave Sri Lanka.
It did make clear, though, that the Sinhalese were not going to be passive subjects, and
that, along with British Ceylon’s economic instability, made its annexation an unattractive
prospect for the Raj.
So, British India and Ceylon stayed separate for the remaining 90 years of British rule
on the subcontinent, but Britain was eventually made to leave India and Ceylon, and yet still,
the two remained distinct entities.
Sri Lanka gained independence in February 1948 as the Dominion of Ceylon.
Much like, say, Canada or Australia, Britain’s monarch remained their ceremonial head of
state, but in practice the country was sovereign.
Like in India, independence was achieved almost exclusively through non-violent protest, but
unlike Sri Lanka, the former British Raj was
not a peaceful place immediately following Britain's exit.
The partitioning of the Raj into the countries India and Pakistan was a messy, bloody affair.
The parts of it ruled by Indian princes were free to choose which of the new nations they
would join, though complicating that, some,
notably, Kashmir and Hyderabad, tried to become independent.
That didn’t work out so well for them.
The chaos of partition and the Indo-Pakistani war of 1947-48, left hundreds of thousands
dead, and millions displaced.
In short, joining up with India then would’ve looked, to Sri Lankans, like a terrible idea.
It was also the case that, despite the best efforts of India’s founding father, Mahatma
Gandhi, India, while officially secular, was
going to be a largely Hindu state; most British-Indian
Muslims became citizens of Pakistan.
Regardless, most Sri Lankans were neither.
Though the island had small Hindu and Muslim minorities, the Buddhist Sinhalese remained,
by far, the largest community in Sri Lanka.
The other notable group did have fellows in India, but being a minority whether or not
the Tamils wished for unification was irrelevant.
In 1972 the Dominion of Ceylon shrugged off its last colonial vestige by becoming a republic
and renaming itself to Sri Lanka.
As for why, ultimately, it has never become a part of India?
Well, because, as it turns out, while sharing a colonizer, cultural history, and being next
door neighbours, may sometimes be a good enough reason to form a country together,
India and Sri Lanka are content to just be friends.
Britain stuck her imperial nose into more than a few countries, and you can check out
Ethiopia’s interactions with them and others in the video to the left.
If you enjoyed this one though, don’t forget to subscribe for more, and as always, I’ve
been James and thank you for watching Look Back History.