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Sri Lanka Ethnic Composition of the Armed Forces
At independence the government inherited from the British a
military establishment that was neither ethnically nor
religiously representative of the population at large.
Minorities, for example, were heavily overrepresented in the
officer corps. Christians, who comprised about 8 percent of the
population, accounted for about 50 percent of all officers.
Ethnically, Tamils and Burghers, who together comprised less than
20 percent of the population, accounted for 40 percent of the
officer corps. This unbalanced representation was the result of a
number of deliberate policies and incidental developments under
the British. As in India, the colonial government in Sri Lanka
tended to favor certain minorities in the selection of both
military and civil service posts. In addition, the greater
willingness of the Tamils to attend Christian missionary schools
gave them the advantage of knowing the language, faith, and value
system of the colonial administration. These Christian schools
were also more likely than their Buddhist counterparts to offer
rigorous physical training; the student cadet corps that were
common in the colonial tradition were anathema to the Buddhist
pacifist orthodoxy. Finally, the largely Westernized Burgher
population adapted more easily to the social and public values of
a colonial force.
In the first few years of independence, the high
representation of Christians and minorities in the military
leadership was fully in step with the political currents of the
time; the governments of Don Stephen Senanayake and Sir John
Kotelawala were dominated by a Westernized elite that preached
accommodation with all ethnic groups. Starting in the mid-1950s,
however, a new Sinhalese and Buddhist nationalism turned
increasingly against the British-sponsored elite of the colonial
period. Within the government, this tendency was reflected in the
victory of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike in the 1956 elections. In the
military, however, changes were much more gradual; most of the
commissions that had become available in the newly created
services were already filled, and the relatively young army had
few officers approaching retirement age. As a result, this period
was marked by an increasing strain between the civil and the
military authorities. The government's program of nationalization
and its attempt to establish a privileged place for Buddhism and
the Sinhala language caused increasing conflict around the
island. In January 1962, several high-ranking military officers
were arrested and accused of planning a coup d'état. They
reportedly had planned to restore order by detaining a number of
prominent left-wing politicians from the Bandaranaike coalition
and returning the UNP to office. By the time the conspiracy was
made public, the original plans had already been abandoned.
Nonetheless, the Bandaranaike government used the potential
threat to bolster its pro-Buddhist campaign, making political
capital from the fact that all of the conspirators had been
Christians.
Despite the initial resistance from a number of military
officers, the government succeeded gradually in recasting the
armed forces in its own image. Recruitment at all levels became
increasingly dominated by Sinhalese Buddhists, and by mid-1983
Tamils accounted for less than 5 percent of all military
personnel. Military training that previously had been conducted
in a variety of languages was now limited to Sinhala and English.
Also, under the leadership of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, the army was
supplemented with the new Sinha Regiment, whose name and
unprecedented lack of regimental colors stood in clear opposition
to the British colonial regalia of the Ceylon Light Infantry.
Even the Light Infantry took on a new Sinhalese cast when in 1961
it adopted an elephant named Kandula as its regimental mascot; as
the Times of Ceylon was quick to point out, Kandula was
the battle elephant of Dutthagamani (or Duttugemunu), the ancient
Sinhalese king who was credited with driving the Tamils out of
Sri Lanka in the second century B.C.
The Sinhalization of the armed forces continued under the
United National Party government of President Jayewardene. The
retirement of the British-educated cadre of Tamil and Burgher
officers gradually depleted the ranks of minority members. At the
same time, the growing ethnic divisions in the country and the
deployment of the armed forces against the Tamil population in
the Northern Province tended to discourage young Tamil males from
pursuing a career in the military. By 1985 almost all enlisted
personnel in the armed services were Sinhalese.
Data as of October 1988
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