A Battle of Flowers
The Evolution of the Suriya Mal Movement
Which flower would you buy? One that represents justice or one that represents injustice?
This was the manner in which Doreen Young posed the cause of the Suriya Mal Movement to the readers of the Ceylon Daily News in 1933. Her article, reproduced in Britain, World War 2 & the Sama Samajists edited by Wesley S. Muthiah and Sydney Wanasinghe, expresses outrage at sending money to English ex-servicemen via Poppy sales on Armistice Day when the needs of Ceylonese poor were greater. According to Young, close to half of past Poppy sale collections were sent to England. The question was not as she says “one of English ex-servicemen versus Ceylonese ex-servicemen”, but of “English ex-servicemen versus the starving masses of this land.” This characterisation of the Suriya Mal Movement is surprising considering the anti-imperialist nature it took on later. Another document included in the Muthia-Wanasinghe collection is a leaflet under the caption “Suriya and Poppy and War” possibly published circa November 1939 poses the idea that the suriya flower is a symbol of the “aspiration of the people of our country for peace, freedom and self-respect as against imperialism, war and slavery.”
Young Shoots
The anti-Poppy sentiment’s first significant milestone was a public meeting and demonstration in 1926 organised by “The Cosmopolitan Crew,” a group of young Ceylonese nationalists. One of its members, James Rutnam wrote to the newspapers about how only an insignificant portion of Poppy Day collections was reserved for Ceylonese ex-servicemen. The Crew put up posters and distributed handbills that said “Let us not help the Poppy Day funds; Ceylon’s needs are greater. Charity begins at home.” The Crew’s members would later become active in the Youth League movement which made the anti-Poppy movement a vehicle for anti-imperialism and assisted in relief activities during the malaria epidemic of 1934–35.
The Suriya Mal Movement’s actual beginning lay with Aelian Pereira, an ex-serviceman and the president of both the Ceylon Ex-Servicemen’s Association and the Youth Congress. Under Pereira’s leadership, the poppy’s rival fund was born and caused quite the stir in 1931. Kumari Jayawardene notes in her article “Origins of the Left Movement in Sri Lanka” that the press reported a class distinction between patrons of the two funds; while Colombo’s pedestrians preferred the suriya mal “most cars had poppies.” There was of course plenty of resistance to the rival flower. Jayawardene notes that some British companies barred employees from wearing suriya mal and some schools in Colombo denied entry to the suriya mal sellers. A year later, in a Times of Ceylon article, Pereira wrote that “there is an idea that it is dirty and mean to sell the Suriya flower on armistice day.”
The Youth Leagues which joined the campaign would eventually hijack the Suriya Mal campaign. This politicisation led to the Ex-Servicemen’s Association discontinuing the movement and the Ceylon Central Youth League electing a committee to take over its operations in 1933.
Enter Doreen
Doreen Young, while serving as principal of Ananda Balika, was elected president of the Suriya Mal Movement when the League took over. The Movement became a rallying point for left-wing Ceylonese returning from abroad and local Youth Leagues and was one of the most significant advances that led to the formation of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party in 1935 (LSSP). Young was already leading girl’s education reforms, agitating for workers’ rights, and challenging the local social structures like the caste system. Young is credited with radicalising Buddhist girls’ education by breaking through the ‘wives and mothers’ mould. As principal of Sujatha Vidyalaya, she had been appalled to find that boarders were expected to contribute 50 cents each on Poppy Day.
Young, along with her husband, state councilor Dr. S.A. Wickremasinghe, were already stalwarts of the leftist movement. Wickremasinghe would go on to co-found the Communist Party of Sri Lanka from which Young would be elected to Parliament in 1952. So it comes as no surprise that their residence would become the headquarters of the Suriya Mal Movement. Their home saw an influx of school teachers and senior students, all determined to do their small part for the Movement. Whether it was making suriya flowers for sale, drumming up publicity in schools, factories, and offices, and writing the press and journals explaining the purpose of the Movement, Young’s residence was the epicenter of all activities. It was at this time that Young wrote her seminal article:
“…there is such a thing as loyalty to a suffering humanity as well as to a system of Government. It is useless to sigh as you think of the glorious dead and ignore the duty you owe to the glorious living whose inglorious conditions are in part the responsibility of every citizen.”
Resistance to the Suriya Mal Movement never withered of course with it being accused of being “a crude political move” and “in bad taste” in the Editorial in Ceylon Independent, November 11, 1933. By 1936, conservative Buddhist educators were disturbed by the Movement’s overt political nature and its association with a Buddhist girls’ school. Young men from the Movement would frequent the principal’s residence and interact with the teachers. Young was replaced as principal and worked as a teacher until June 1936.
Words into Action
The Suriya Mal Movement is best known for its relief efforts during the malaria epidemic of 1934–35 in which the colonial administration and the state legislature failed to provide for the populace. The epidemic came after two seasons of severe drought and failure of crops and mainly affected the Western and Sabaragamuwa Provinces. Official estimates put the number of cases at 1.5 million cases of malaria by April 1935, and over 100,000 deaths between September 1934 and December 1935 (Sri Lanka’s population was 5.3 million according to the 1931 census). The Newnham Report on Relief of Distress due to Sickness and Shortage of Food describes the horrific living conditions of the affected population:
…the specially dangerous feature of the domestic economy of many of the people is the lack of any reserve at the back of this low standard of diet. They are brought very near to starvation point by any small disturbance of their normal equilibrium… Then the morning meal may be reduced to a small quantity of weak plain tea with a suspicion of sugar…the midday meal becomes a small quantity of boiled breadfruit, jak, papaw or some jungle fruit.
The Suriya Mal Movement worked towards providing food and basic healthcare for the affected population, especially in the Kegalle District. Members of the movement including Dr. Wickremasinghe and some teachers Ananda Balika worked in a dispensary that was set up for relief work. A report by the Commissioner of Relief paints the Movement in a positive light, commending them as “intelligent and systematic voluntary workers’’ and that they provided “an admirable service.”
For the Suriya Mal Movement, the epidemic was not by any means a ‘natural’ disaster but a thoroughly mismanaged disaster due to the negligence and indifference of the state. In the eyes of the Movement, there was no greater example of this indifference than the celebration of the Royal Jubilee funded by taxpayer money. Colvin R. de Silva had alleged that “the so-called national leaders had been entertaining Royal Dukes, celebrating Royal Jubilees, hunting for knighthoods, relieving the rich of their responsibility by repealing estate duty, and lightening the taxes paid by foreign exploiters” while Ceylon’s suffering populace was forgotten.
Clear Thinking and Courage
Given the context in which the Suriya Mal Movement flourished, it is no wonder that it morphed into an anti-imperialist campaign and that the flower itself became a symbol of freedom. While many of the Movement’s members would go on to be noteworthy Leftist politicians and activists, the ideas of social justice emphasised in Doreen Young’s article were lost with time. The article ends with these thoughts on the two things that Ceylon needed desperately:
“Firstly clear thinking, looking a little beneath the surface of things and seeing through a superficial glamour. And secondly the courage needed to stand up for one’s convictions even when it involves the loss of esteem of those for whose opinion one cares.”
Young could not have envisioned that her words would hold true for Sri Lanka nearly ninety years later.
References
- Jayawardena, V. K., 1972. The Rise Of The Labor Movement In Ceylon. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.
- Jayawardena, V., 1974. Origins of the Left Movement in Sri Lanka. Social Scientist, 2(6/7), p.3.
- Jayawardena, K., 2014. The White Woman’s Other Burden. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis.
- Muthiah, W. and Wanasinghe, S., 1996. Britain, World War 2 & The Sama Samajists. Colombo: Young Socialist Publication.
- Wickramasinghe, N., 2014. Sri Lanka In The Modern Age. New York: Oxford University Press.
