Sri Lanka has remained an important trading stopover for the maritime trade in the Indian Ocean through a major part of its history. Its strategic position for the maritime trade gave it a history of imperial stress by its stronger neighbors and the European Colonialists in the Early Modern Times. Sri Lankans, however, have resisted imperial presures with grace and valor. Its Buddhist-Hindu culture gave it the resilience to preserve its national identity and cultural vitality despite the experince of colonial rule. The History of Sri Lanka offers a very interesting account of a relatively small nation surviving and flourising in the teeth of foreign imperial pressures. This page studies and debates the various aspects of the History of Sri Lanka. It attempts to focus on the Sri Lankan History from a peace perspective.It extols Sri Lanka’s constant efforts to maintain its sovereignty, national honor through mostly peaceful means. Feel free to join our debate on the Sri Lankan History by posting your articles, research papers, podcasts and video clips on relevant subjects on this Website. We start this discussion by a brief introduction tho the History of Sri Lanka.
Chronology of Sri Lanka’s History
500 BC The Sinhalese started coming to Sri-Lanka from India.
483 BC Gautam Buddha passed away.
500s AD Mahavamsa (Great Chronicle) history, written by Buddhist monks. According to the Mahavamsa, the first ruler of the island was Vijaya, a banished prince from northern India, whose arrival coincided with the parinibbana (passing away) of Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, in 483 bc. This legend helped establish the powerful belief among the Sinhalese that they were the chosen guardians of Buddhism.
Early 1500s When Europeans first came to the island of present-day Sri Lanka in the early 1500s, it was fragmented between three local polities: two Sinhalese kingdoms, centered in Sri Jayawardenepura (Kotte) in the southwest and Kandy in the central highlands, and a Tamil kingdom centered in the Jaffna Peninsula.
1505 The first Europeans to visit Sri Lanka in modern times were the Portuguese: Lourenço de Almeida arrived and found that the island, divided into seven warring kingdoms, was unable to fend off intruders.
1517 The Portuguese founded a fort at the port city of Colombo and gradually extended their control over the coastal areas.
1517-1658 Sri-Lanka under Portuguese Rule.
1500-1815 Kandy Kingdom.
1592 The Sinhalese moved their capital to the inland city of Kandy, a location more secure against attack from invaders. Intermittent warfare continued through the 16th century.
16th Century Many lowland Sinhalese converted to Christianity due to missionary campaigns by the Portuguese while the coastal Moors were religiously persecuted and forced to retreat to the Central highlands. The Buddhist majority disliked the Portuguese occupation and its influences, welcoming any power who might rescue them.
1602 When the Dutch captain Joris van Spilbergen landed, the king of Kandy appealed to him for help.
1619 Jaffna kingdom is annexed and Sri Lanka’s ruling dynasty deposed by Portuguese Catholics who, between 1505 and 1658, destroy most of the island’s Hindu temples.
Early 1600s The Dutch sought to wrest control of the maritime spice trade from Portugal.
1638 Rajasinghe II, the king of Kandy, made a treaty with the Dutch in 1638 to get rid of the Portuguese who ruled most of the coastal areas of the island. The main conditions of the treaty were that the Dutch were to hand over the coastal areas they had captured to the Kandyan king in return for a Dutch trade monopoly over the island. The agreement was breached by both parties.
1639-1640 With the help of local leaders, the Dutch attacked Portuguese strongholds in the island, winning major victories.
1656 The Dutch captured Colombo.
1658 The Dutch captured the last Portuguese strongholds near Jaffnapatnam.
By 1660 The Dutch controlled the whole island except the land-locked kingdom of Kandy. The Dutch (Protestants) persecuted the Catholics and the remaining Portuguese settlers but left Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims alone. The Dutch levied far heavier taxes on the people than the Portuguese had done. A legacy of the Dutch period in Ceylon are the Dutch Burghers, a people of mixed Dutch and local origin.
1658-1796 Sri-Lanka under the Dutch Rule.
1790s During the Napoleonic Wars, Great Britain, fearing that French control of the Netherlands might deliver Sri Lanka to the French, occupied the coastal areas of the island (which they called Ceylon) with little difficulty in 1796.
1796 East India Company took control of coastal region Ceylon from Dutch.
1793-98 Ceylon remained a part of the Madras Presidency.
25 March 1802 As a result of the Treaty of Amiens formally ceded the Dutch part of the island to Britain and it became a crown colony.
1803 The British invaded the Kingdom of Kandy in the first Kandyan War, but were repulsed.
1815 Following several British military campaigns, the Kingdom of Kandy capitulated to British sovereignty.
1817-18 Sinhala Uprising against the British in what came to be called the Uva–Wellassa uprising (after the two places it had started), or simply the Uva rebellion. It is also considered to be the third Kandyan War with the British, in what is now Sri Lanka. It took place in what is now Uva, which was then a province of the Kingdom of Kandy, against the British colonial government under Governor Robert Brownrigg, which had been controlling the formerly independent Udarata (Up-Country in Sinhalese). The rebellion was suppressed ending the independence of Sri Lanka. Following the suppression of the Uva Rebellion the Kandyan peasantry were stripped of their lands by the Wastelands Ordinance, a modern enclosure movement, and reduced to penury.
1833 The British began to govern the country under a single administration. Previously, the island had been governed under administrative divisions along ethnic and cultural lines. The British also created an economy based on plantation agriculture. The administration took over vast areas of land in the central highlands, sold them cheaply to British nationals, and encouraged the development of large plantations. Tea, rubber, and coconuts became the colony’s principal exports. When local Sinhalese refused to work in the plantations, the colonial administration brought in large numbers of Tamils from southern India to work as migrant laborers.
The Burghers were given degree of self-government.
1848 Sinhala Uprising aganst the British.
Mid-19th Century The British found that the uplands of Sri Lanka were very suitable for coffee, tea and rubber cultivation. By the mid-19th century, Ceylon tea had become a staple of the British market bringing great wealth to a small number of white tea planters. The planters imported large numbers of Tamil workers as indentured laborers from south India to work the estates, who soon made up 10% of the island’s population. These workers had to work in slave-like conditions living in line rooms, not very different from cattle sheds.
1877-1947 Lifetime of Sri Lanka’s Ananda Coomaraswamy, foremost interpreter of Indian art and culture to the West.
1909 Constitutional development began, with a partly elected assembly.
1910 Modest reforms following indigenous struggle
1920 Elected members outnumbered official appointees.
1920s Ceylon National Congress (CNC) was founded to agitate for greater autonomy, although the party was soon split along ethnic and caste lines. The refusal of the Ceylon Tamils to accept minority status is one of the main causes of the breakup of the Ceylon National congress. The CNC did not seek independence (or “Swaraj”). What may be called the independence movement broke into two streams: the “constitutionalists”, who sought independence by gradual modification of the status of Ceylon; and the more radical groups associated with the Colombo Youth League, Labor movement of Goonasinghe, and the Jaffna Youth Congress.
1924 Government Reforms
1926 Jawaharlal Nehru, Sarojini Naidu and other Indian leaders visited Ceylon. Sri Lankan radicals call for ‘Swaraj’ or independence.
1931 The efforts of the constitutionalists led to the arrival of the Donoughmore Commission reforms. Universal adult suffrage has been in place since 1931. The minimum voting age is 18. Universal suffrage was introduced over the protests of the Sinhalese, Tamil and Burgher elite who objected to the common people being allowed to vote.
1935 The Marxist Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), which grew out of the Youth Leagues.It made the demand for outright independence a cornerstone of their policy. Its deputies in the State Council, N.M. Perera and Philip Gunawardena, were aided in this struggle by other less radical members like Colvin R. De Silva, Leslie Goonewardena, Vivienne Goonewardena, Edmund Samarkody and Natesa Iyer. They also demanded the replacement of English as the official language by Sinhala and Tamil. The Marxist groups were a tiny minority and yet their movement was viewed with great interest by the British administration. The ineffective attempts to rouse the public against the British Raj in revolt would have led to certain bloodshed and a delay in independence. British state papers released in the 1950s show that the Marxist movement had a very negative impact on the policy makers at the Colonial office.
1930s The Tamil organization was by led by G. G. Ponnambalam, who had rejected the “Ceylonese identity”. Ponnamblam had declared himself a “proud Dravidian” and proclaimed an independent identity for the Tamils. He attacked the Sinhalese and criticized their historical chronicle known as the Mahavamsa. Ponnambalam opposed universal franchise, supported the caste system, and claimed that the protection of minority rights requires that minorities (35% of the population in 1931) having an equal number of seats in parliament to that of the Sinhalese (65% of the population). This “50-50” or “balanced representation” policy became the hall mark of Tamil politics of the time. Ponnambalam also accused the British of having established colonization in “traditional Tamil areas”, and having favored the Buddhists by the Buddhist temporalities act. The Soulbury Commission rejected the submissions by Ponnambalam and even criticized what they described as their unacceptable communal character.
1939 First Sinhala-Tamil Riot in Navalapitiya.
1939-45 The close collaboration of the D. S. Senanayake government with the war-time British administration led to the support of Lord Louis Mountbatten. His dispatches and a telegram to the Colonial office supporting Independence for Ceylon have been cited by historians as having helped the Senanayake government to secure the independence of Sri Lanka. The shrewd cooperation with the British as well as diverting the needs of the war market to Ceylonese markets as a supply point, managed by Oliver Goonatilleke, also led to a very favorable fiscal situation for the newly independent government. Sri Lankan opposition to the war led by the Marxist organizations and the leaders of the LSSP pro-independence group were arrested by the Colonial authorities. Marxist leaders also escaped to India where they participated in the independence struggle there. The movement in Ceylon was minuscule, limited to the English-educated intelligentsia and trade unions, mainly in the urban centers. These groups were led by Robert Gunawardena, Philip’s brother. A small garrison on the Cocos Islands manned by Ceylonese mutinied against British rule. It has been claimed that the LSSP had some hand in the action, though this is far from clear. Three of the participants were the only British colony subjects to be shot for mutiny during World War II. Two members of the Governing Party, Junius Richard Jayawardene and Dudley Senanayake, held discussions with the Japanese to collaborate in fighting the British. Sri Lankans in Singapore and Malaysia formed the ‘Lanka Regiment’ of the anti-British Indian National Army.
1944 The Soulbury Commission (Sinhala:Solbari Komishan Sabhawa), announced. Like its predecessor, the Donoughmore Commission, a prime instrument of constitutional reform in British Ceylon. The immediate basis for the appointment of a commission for constitutional reforms was the 1944 draft constitution of the Board of Ministers, headed by D. S. Senanayake. This commission ushered in Dominion status and Independence to Sri Lanka in 1948. Its constitutional recommendations were largely those of the 1944 Board of Ministers’ draft, a document reflecting the influence of Senanayake and his main advisor, Sir Ivor Jennings.
1946 The Sinhalese leader Don Stephen Senanayake left the CNC on the issue of independence, disagreeing with the revised aim of ‘the achieving of freedom’, although his real reasons were subtler. He subsequently formed the United National Party (UNP) in 1946, when a new constitution was agreed on, based on the behind-the-curtain lobbying of the Soulbury commission.
1947 Elections. The UNP won a minority of seats in parliament, but cobbled together a coalition with the Sinhala Maha Sabha party of Solomon Bandaranaike and the Tamil Congress of G.G. Ponnambalam. The successful inclusions of the Tamil-communalist leader Ponnambalam, and his Sinhala counterpart Bandaranaike were a remarkable political balancing act by Senanayake. The vacuum in Tamil Nationalist politics, created by Ponnamblam’s transition to a moderate, opened the field for the Tamil Arasu Kachchi (“Federal party”), a Tamil sovereignty party led by S. J. V. Chelvanaykam who was the lawyer son of a Christian minister.
1947 Ceylon Independence Act.
Elections for the first government of independent Ceylon were held.
The United National Party (UNP).
February 4,1948 Sri-Lanka became independent. Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon) became a dominion within the British Commonwealth of Nations, a loose alliance of mostly former British colonies. The head of state was formally the British monarch, represented by a governor general. Don Stephen Senanayake took office as the country’s first prime minister. Prior to Ceylon’s independence, he brought together leaders of various communities and interests to form the United National Party (UNP). Its general ideology was liberal, pro-Western, and secular (nonreligious). It favored economic progress through private enterprise. Economic power remained in the hands of a small elite of mercantile entrepreneurs and landowners.
1948 Ceylon applied for United Nations membership, the Soviet Union vetoed the application. This was partly because the Soviet Union believed that the Ceylon was only nominally independent, and the British still exercised control over it because the white, educated elite had control of the government.
1948-72 Sri Lanka was called Ceylon.
1949 With the concurrence of the leaders of the Sri Lankan Tamils, the UNP government disenfranchised the Indian Tamil plantation workers.
1950 Ceylon became one of the original members of the Colombo Plan, and remains a member as Sri Lanka.
1951 Solomon Bandaranaike, minister of local government, resigned from the cabinet and formed his own party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). The party was strongly nationalist and socialist. Most importantly, it represented the interests of Sinhalese Buddhists, who formed the majority of the country’s population.
1952 Senanayake died in an accident in 1952, his son Dudley Senanayake succeeded him.
1953 A massive civil disobedience movement to protest the reduction of the country’s rice subsidy compelled Senanayake to resign. His cousin John Kotelawela replaced him as prime minister. He was followed by John Kotelawala, a senior politician and an uncle of Dudley. Kotelawala did not have the personal prestige or the political acumen of D. S. Senanayake. He brought to the fore the issue of national languages that D. S. Senanayake had suspended.
Political opposition was initially provided by two Marxist parties, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) and the Communist Party of Sri Lanka (CPSL).
1956 The UNP was defeated at elections by the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna, which included the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) led by Solomon Bandaranaike and the Viplavakari Lanka Sama Samaja Party of Philip Gunawardena. Bandaranaike was a politician who had fostered the Sinhala nationalist lobby since the 1930s.
Elections. SLFP come to power, and Bandaranaike headed a coalition government called the People’s United Front (Mahajana Eksath Peramuna, or MEP), comprising the SLFP and a section of the LSSP. The new SLFP-led government enacted a number of fundamental reforms in line with its nationalist and socialist platform.
Ceylon assumed a neutral and nonaligned position in international affairs, and some industries were nationalized. However, the government’s policies that strongly supported Buddhist and Sinhalese cultural activity also created hostile ethnic relations.
1957 British bases were removed and Ceylon officially became a “non-aligned” country. The Paddy Lands Act, the brainchild of Philip Gunawardena, was passed, giving those working the land greater rights vis-a-vis absentee landlords.
1833-1958 English was the official language of Sri Lanka. continues to be widely used and serves as the “link” language between Sinhala and Tamil.
1958 A law was passed to make Sinhala the only official language, thereby requiring its use in all government matters. Tamils strongly objected to the law on the grounds that it excluded them from fully participating in civil service. The new SLFP-led government passed the Official Language Act, which declared Sinhala the sole official language. The law provoked widespread Tamil opposition. Represented by the Federal Party, the Tamils began a struggle to secure official recognition of their language, Tamil. The struggle inflamed communal dissension, and riots were widespread in 1958. The country was plunged into ethnic turmoil and civil strife, with widespread riots, trade union strikes, and conflicts among Buddhist factions.
September 1959 Solomon Bandaranaike was assassinated by an extremist Buddhist monk in September 1959. Bandaranaike’s widow, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, replaced him as leader of the SLFP.
July 1960 Elections. SLFP wins. Bandaranaike became prime minister of Sri Lanka, making her the first female prime minister in the world. Her government avoided further confrontations with the Tamils, but the anti-communist policies of the United States Government led to a cut-off of United States aid and a growing economic crisis. After an attempted coup d’état by mainly non-Buddhist right-wing army and police officers intent on bringing the UNP back to power, Bandaranaike nationalized the oil companies. This led to a boycott of the country by the oil cartels, which was broken with aid from the Kansas Oil Producers Co-operative.
1960 The use of Sinhalese as the language of government and the courts of law was speedily implemented.
Representatives of the Tamil-speaking minority led mass demonstrations against the government’s language policy. To cope with the situation, the government declared a state of emergency and curtailed Tamil political activity.
1962 Under the SLFP’s radical policies, many Western business assets were nationalized. This caused disputes with the United States and the United Kingdom over compensation for seized assets. Such policies led to a temporary decline in SLFP power, and the UNP gained seats in Congress.
1964 Faced with dwindling support, Bandaranaike formed a coalition government with the LSSP, a Trotskyist party with Dr N.M. Perera as Minister of Finance. The SLFP’s right wing defected to the opposition, forcing a general election.
1965 Ceylon became the world’s leading exporter of tea, with 200,000 tons of tea being shipped internationally annually.
Militant Tamil Chauvinist movements, e.g., the Pulippadai (tiger army), had been launched in Trincomalee.
May 1965 Elections. The UNP won a decisive victory, and Dudley Senanayake became prime minister a second time. Senanayake pursued a policy of ethnic and religious reconciliation. Tamils were included in the government, and their language was given some official recognition. The government encouraged private enterprise and eliminated restrictions on imports, resulting in some economic growth.
Run up to 1970 Elections The SLFP formed the United Left Front (ULF) coalition with the Communist Party of Sri Lanka (CPSL) and the LSSP. The ULF exploited the government’s conciliatory policy toward the Tamils to win Sinhalese allegiance. It also attacked the UNP government’s concessions to domestic and foreign capitalist interests.
May 1970 The ULF gained a majority in parliament, and Bandaranaike again became prime minister. Economic Crisis.
April 1971 A group variously labelled Maoist or Guevarist, the People’s Liberation Front (JVP) launched a rebellion. It was led by Rohana Wijeweera, a marxist who had his education at the Lumumba University in the Soviet Union. This movement was not connected with the traditional Sri Lankan Marxist parties which were then in power. Most of the “insurgents” were unemployed literate youth who were the product of the post-independence population explosion. Although the JVP rebellion was brutally suppressed, the JVP found a place in Sri Lankan politics as a voice of leftist Sinhalese nationalism, along with the right-wing movement in the UNP associated with Cyril Matthew.
Nonetheless, after Sirimavo failed to satisfy the far-left, the Marxist People’s Liberation Front attempted to overthrow the government. A radical-left Sinhalese youth movement, the Janatha Vimukhti Peramuna (JVP), staged an insurrection to take over the government. The movement was quickly and ruthlessly suppressed by government forces. After the attempted insurrection, the government moved further left politically.
1971-77 Sri Lanka in a state of emergency.
1972 The rebellion was put down with the help of British, Soviet, and Indian aid. Sri Lanka ratified a new constitution. It changed the name of Ceylon to Sri Lanka, and changed its status from a dominion to a republic. Accordingly, it abolished the position of governor general, made the prime minister head of state, and created the office of president as an appointed position. Bandaranaike continued as prime minister, and William Gopallawa, the last governor general, was appointed president. Sri Lanka was established it as a republic. An appointed president replaced the British monarch as head of state.
1972 The government initiated land reforms with a law that limited the size of privately owned land and nationalized acreage in excess of the limit.
1975 Government amended the law to nationalize foreign-owned plantations.
Factionalism within the governing ULF coalition tore it apart, LSSP expelled.
The mayor of Jaffna was assassinated.
1976 The Jaffna university was “ethnically cleansed” of non-Tamils and the city itself began to be subject to similar “ethnic cleansing”, eliminating Muslim and Sinhala residents. The Tamil community objected to the constitution’s lack of protection for the rights of minorities and its elevation of Buddhism to the status of a protected state religion. To represent their interests, Tamils organized the Tamil United Front (renamed the Tamil United Liberation Front, or TULF.
Late 1970s The Extreme-Tamil groups rejected and physically eliminated the main Colombo-Tamil leadership of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF). Tamil public servants or members of parliament working with the government were harassed. The militants claimed their independence, their rights, and their “traditional homeland”, and formed armed separatist groups such as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (‘Tamil Tigers’), demanding an independent Tamil state called Eelam. Much of this had the implicit and material support of politicians in India.
1977 CPSL also withdrew support from the governing ULF. Lacking a parliamentary majority, Bandaranaike was forced to call general elections for July 1977.
July 1977 Elections. Overwhelming victory for the UNP, and the party’s leader, Junius Jayewardene, became Prime Minister. By this time Jayewardene had remade the UNP as a social-democratic party with a new emphasis on state intervention to improve the economy.
The TULF campaigned on a new demand for an independent Tamil state. It became the largest opposition party in the legislature.
October 1977 The new UNP government amended the constitution to introduce a new presidential system of government. A directly elected president became the country’s most powerful official.
February 1978 Junius Jayewardene became President of Sri Lanka. He contested on a manifesto pledging a market economy and “a free ration of 8 seers (kilograms) of cereals”. The SLFP and the left-wing parties were virtually wiped out in Parliament (although they garnered 40% of the popular vote), leaving the Tamil United Liberation Front, led by Appapillai Amirthalingam, as the official opposition. This created a dangerous ethnic cleavage in Sri Lankan politics.
September 1978 A new constitution adopted in September incorporated the amendment. It also made both Sinhala and Tamil the national languages of Sri Lanka. It established the popular election of the president. Constitution made Tamil a national language, while Sinhala remained the higher-status official language.
Late 1970s The UNP government moved quickly to stimulate the stagnating economy. Sri Lanka became one of the first developing countries to adopt a program of economic liberalization in order to establish a free-market economy, abolishing the model of a state-controlled economy. High growth rate and rising inequality.
1980 Jayewardene crushed a general strike by the trade-union movement, jailing its leaders.
1981 Elections to District Councils were marred by the open theft of ballot boxes in Jaffna. The Jaffna Library, the repository of thousands of valuable documents was burned down by thugs alleged to be linked with the government.
1982 Elections. The main opposition candidate, Hector Kobbekaduwa was garlanded with onions by the farmers of the Jaffna peninsular, impoverished by the policy of unrestricted imports. The Presidential election, held amidst widespread acts of electoral malpractice (Hector Kobbekaduwa arrived at the polling station only to find his vote had already been cast) resulted in Jayawardene’s re-election.Jayewardene won a second six-year term as president. The TULF abandoned its separatist policy after negotiations with the government.
Jayawardene followed his electoral victory with an infamous plebiscite on postponing parliamentary elections for six years. Associates of Kobbekaduwa, such as TB Ilangaratne and Vijaya Kumaratunga, were jailed as ‘Naxalites’, a political creed unheard of in Sri Lanka, before or since. The Commissioner of Elections, in his report on the referendum, reported that it was flawed.
Early 1980s Many Sri Lankan Tamils continued to support the demand for an independent Tamil nation, however. The Tamil separatist movement included a number of guerrilla groups who used violent tactics to make their demands known. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) emerged as the main Tamil separatist group.
1983 Following a demonstration against the US establishment of a military base in Diego Garcia, former MP Vivienne Goonewardena was physically assaulted at a police station. Her fundamental rights application in this matter was upheld by the Supreme Court in an act of judicial independence. Following this, thugs stoned the houses of the Supreme Court judges who had made the ruling and the police officer who had been convicted had his fine paid by the government and received a promotion.
July-August 1983 Communal riots took place due to the ambush and killing of 13 Sri Lankan Army soldiers by the Tamil Tigers. Using the voters list which contained the exact addresses of Tamils, the Tamil community faced a backlash from Sinhalese rioters including the destruction of shops, homes and savage beatings. However, quite a few Sinhalese kept Tamil neighbors in their homes to protect them from the rioters. During these riots the government did nothing to control the mob. Conservative government estimates put the death toll at 400, while the real death toll is believed to be around 3000. Also around 18,000 Tamil homes and 5,000 homes were destroyed, with 150,000 leaving the country resulting in a Tamil Diaspora in Canada, UK, Australia and other western countries.
The LTTE launched a guerrilla war, violently attacking Sinhalese and Muslim civilians, as well as government security forces in northern and eastern Sri Lanka. Government forces responded with violent retribution. The Indian government became involved in attempts to resolve the conflict. India’s predominantly Tamil southern states provided bases and supplies for the Sri Lankan Tamil guerrillas.
July 1987 By the terms of an agreement between the governments of India and Sri Lanka in July 1987, an Indian peacekeeping force replaced Sri Lankan troops in the Jaffna Peninsula. Other terms of the agreement included the eventual formation of a Tamil autonomous region in the Northern and Eastern provinces.
The JVP and SLFP vehemently opposed the agreement as an abandonment of Sri Lanka’s territorial integrity. Protesting against the deployment of foreign troops in Sri Lanka, the JVP launched a well-orchestrated guerrilla insurgency to destabilize the government.
1987 A constitutional amendment in 1987 elevated the status of Tamil to an official language.
December 1988 Despite massive disruption by the JVP, presidential elections were held in December 1988. Ranasinghe Premadasa of the UNP won the election by a narrow margin. The government subsequently crushed the JVP insurgency, capturing most of its leadership.
1989 Jayewardene was succeeded by his own choice as President, Ranasinghe Premadasa, who asked for the Indian troops to be withdrawn – which was later done by Indian Prime Minister V.P. Singh.
By April 1990 The Indian intervention failed to bring peace, and all Indian troops were withdrawn from Sri Lanka.
1991-92 Tamil Insurgency continued.
May 1993 President Premadasa was assassinated during the annual May Day parade. The government alleged the assassin was a member of LTTE, but the LTTE denied the charge.
Following the assassination of President Premadasa, the incumbent prime minister, Dingiri Banda Wijetunga, took his place with the approval of Parliament. To fill the office of prime minister, Wijetunga appointed the minister for industrial development, Ranil Wickremesinghe of the UNP. Wijetunga then dissolved Parliament and called early legislative elections in August 1994, ahead of the presidential election scheduled for November, in an apparent bid to secure his nomination as the UNP’s presidential candidate.
November 1993 LTTE forces seized a government military base in Pooneryn, near Jaffna. Several days later government forces drove the rebel forces back and recovered the base. The fighting was some of the worst between the Sri Lankan government and Tamil guerrillas, with heavy casualties on both sides.
1994 Legislative Elections. A new SLFP-dominated coalition, the People’s Alliance (PA), won a narrow victory in the legislative elections, ending 17 years of UNP dominance. Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, daughter of Solomon and Sirimavo Bandaranaike and leader of the PA, became prime minister. She immediately began unconditional peace talks with the LTTE.
August 1994 Kumaratunga was selected by the PA to contest the presidential election in 1994. The candidate of the UNP, Gamani Dissanayake, was assassinated just prior to the election by a suspected LTTE suicide bomber. As a result, the government declared a state of emergency and suspended peace talks with the LTTE. Kumaratunga won the election with 62 percent of the vote, thereby securing the presidency for the PA. She appointed her mother as prime minister.
The People’s Alliance under Bandaranaike’s daughter Chandrika Kumaratunga won legislative elections on a platform of concessions to the Tamils and a ‘balanced economy’. Kumaratunga became Prime Minister.
November 1994 Chandrika Kumaratunga was elected President, appointing her 78-year-old (but still active) mother Prime Minister. A ceasefire ensued, which broke down by the Tamil tigers after several months – the beginning of Eelam War III. Under the Bandaranaikes the war dragged on, with the military unable to defeat the separatists and the government opposed to negotiations.
End of 1995 Government forces captured the city of Jaffna, which had been held by the LTTE since 1985.
By Mid-1996 The government secured control of the entire Jaffna Peninsula, but the LTTE maintained a strong presence there. The LTTE continued to launch guerrilla attacks on government forces in the north, while also conducting numerous suicide bombings in Colombo and other cities that resulted in many civilian casualties.
October and November 1999 The LTTE inflicted a series of defeats on the Sri Lankan army and regained control over large areas of territory in the north that the army had previously secured.
December 1999 Days before the December 1999 presidential elections, which were being held almost a year ahead of schedule, Kumaratunga was injured in a suicide-bombing assassination attempt attributed to the LTTE. The elections proceeded, and Kumaratunga was reelected to a second six-year term with 51 percent of the vote.
By 2000 An estimated 65,000 people had been killed in the Sri Lankan conflict.
2000 Legislative elections, the PA won a slim majority in Parliament. Bandaranaike had resigned as Prime Minister prior to the elections. In her place, Kumaratunga appointed a close confidante, Ratnasiri Wickremanayake, and he retained the premiership after the elections.
October 2001 Faced with a possible no-confidence vote, Kumaratunga dissolved the legislature in October 2001 and called for new elections in December.
December 2001 Legislature Elections. The elections gave the UNP a majority of seats in the legislature. The leader of the UNP, Ranil Wickremesinghe, became prime minister a second time. A 180-degree turn in UNP policy occurred and the UNP returned to office on a policy of a negotiated settlement with the Tigers, with Wickremasinghe as Prime Minister. A cease fire began, the first long cessation of hostilities since the beginning of the conflict. But the 1978 constitution left the Prime Minister with little power against a hostile President.
February 2002 A Ceasefire between the LTTE and Sri Lankan government.
September 2002 The government and the LTTE entered a new round of negotiations with the Norwegian government mediating. Both parties expressed desire for reconciliation and peace.
2003 The peace talks broke off, although the ceasefire remained in place.
March 2004 Chandrika Kumaratunga dismissed Wickremesinghe and called fresh elections, which returned the SLFP to office under Mahinda Rajapakse. In parliamentary elections, the SLFP-led United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) won 105 of the 225 seats and named Mahinda Rajapakse the prime minister. Although it lacked an absolute majority, the alliance was expected to form a coalition government with a smaller party. The elections ended the rivalry that had existed when the UNP controlled the legislature and the UPFA controlled the presidency. Because Prime Minister Rajapakse was appointed by Kumaratunga as the leader of the alliance, Kumaratunga was expected to emerge as an even more powerful figure, controlling both the executive and legislative branches of government. However, new complications were created by the strong showing of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the political wing of the LTTE, which won 22 seats in Parliament. A dissident Karuna group had emerged in the LTTE.
December 26,2004 Tsunami struck in the coastal areas of the Indian Ocean. Sri Lanka was a hard-hit country, with more than 30,000 people reported dead or missing.
August 2005 The assassination of Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar by the LTTE (although they denied responsibility), further hardened attitudes. His successor was Anura Bandaranaike, the President’s brother and putative political heir. Twenty years of civil conflict had done immense damage to Sri Lankan society and the economy, which has fallen behind other Asian economies, although it remains the second most prosperous nation in South Asia.
17 November 2005 Presidential elections. Prime Minister Rajapakse of the SLFP narrowly won the presidency, defeating former Prime Minister Wickremesinghe of the UNP. Rajapakse campaigned on a platform of economic nationalization and said he would seek to renegotiate the peace agreement with the LTTE. He promised voters that he would not agree to one of the LTTE’s chief demands, which called for power-sharing in the government.
Rajapakse’s campaign drew the support of the Marxist JVP and the nationalist National Heritage Party (JHU), both of which oppose negotiations with the LTTE. His narrow victory in the elections may have been made possible by an unofficial boycott of the election in Jaffna, the city with the greatest concentration of ethnic Tamils, where only 1.2 percent of 700,000 registered voters showed up at the polls.
December 2005 Rajapakse named his new cabinet, which excluded members of the JVP and JHU. Political observers said the move was intended to provoke early parliamentary elections in which Rajapakse hoped to increase the number of seats held by the SLFP and thereby reduce the need for an alliance with the JVP and JHU.
17 May, 2009 Selvarasa Pathmanathan, the LTTE chief of international relations, admit the organization’s defeat stating “This battle has reached its bitter end … We have decided to silence our guns. Our only regrets are for the lives lost and that we could not hold out for longer”.
Monday, 18 May 2009 The Sri Lankan government declared total victory.
19 May 2009 The Sri Lankan military effectively concluded its 26-year operation against the LTTE. Its military forces recaptured all remaining LTTE controlled territories in the Northern Province, including notably Killinochchi (2 January), the Elephant Pass (9 January) and ultimately the entire district of Mullaitivu. This final battle claimed the lives of several top LTTE leaders and Velupillai Prabhakaran who was reported to have attempted to flee. Soldiers of the 4th Vijayabahu infantry regiment led by Lt. Col Rohitha Aluvihare claimed to have found the body of Prabhakaran, and so militarily ending a separatist war that had defined Sri Lanka’s history for three decades.
22 May 2009 Sri Lankan Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa confirmed that 6,261 personnel of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces had lost their lives and 29,551 were wounded during Eelam War IV since July 2006. Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara added that approximately 22,000 LTTE cadres had died during this time. Later the LTTE admitted Prabhakaran’s death and accepted defeat. The Sri Lankan civil war cost the lives of an estimated 80,000–100,000 people. This included more than 23,327 Sri Lankan soldiers and policemen, 1,155 Indian soldiers and 27,639 Tamil fighters. The numbers were confirmed by Secretary of Defense Ministry Gotabhaya Rajapaksa in an interview with state television on 22 May 2009. 23,790 Sri Lankan military personnel were killed since 1981 (it was not specified if police or other non-armed forces personnel were included in this particular figure).
January 2010 Presidential Elections. Mahinda Rajapaksa won the elections with 59% of the votes, defeating General Sarath Fonseka who was the united opposition candidate.
By 2010 Sri Lanka’s poverty rate was 8.9% while it was 15.2% in 2006. Sri Lanka also made it into the “high” category of the Human Development Index during this time.
November 2014 Mahinda Rajapksa called for early elections as signs of declining public support started to appear.Taking the chance the General Secretary of the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party and Health minister Maithripala Sirisena defected and said he would contest President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the upcoming presidential election. He was backed by the former president Chandrika Kumaratunga, UNP and its leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, Jathika Hela Urumaya as well as Sarath Fonseka. In his speech he promised to end Thuggery, embezzlement, crime, drug mafia, nepotism and corruption. The largest Muslim party of Sri Lanka also left the government and joined Maithripala.
January 2015 Presidential Elections. Maithripala won the election with 51.28% of the votes and took oath as president. He removed politically appointed officials such as the Chief of Justice Mohan Peiris and launched a major anti-corruption campaign
