Independence 1948

On 4 February 1948 Ceylon, as Sri Lanka was then called, became independent. Encyclopaedia Britannica records that this was the day the constitution of 1947 went into effect. The country did not become a republic at that point. It became a dominion: a self-governing state within the Commonwealth, with the British monarch still head of state.

Sri Lanka's Ministry of Finance describes the change in the same terms. The colonial Governor, who had acted on instructions from the British Government, was replaced by a Governor-General who answered to the Parliament of Ceylon and not to London. The Commonwealth lists 1948 as the year Sri Lanka joined, following independence from Britain.

Independence followed several stages of constitutional change. The Parliament of Sri Lanka traces the island's first colonial legislative bodies, the Executive Council and the Legislative Council, to 1833. A new constitution in 1931 created a State Council with both law-making and executive duties. Britannica notes that it also granted universal suffrage, which brought all Ceylonese into the political process.

In 1944 the British Government appointed the Soulbury Commission to work on further reform. The Ministry of Finance records that its work drew on a draft constitution prepared in 1944 by the Board of Ministers, headed by D. S. Senanayake, with Sir Ivor Jennings as the main adviser. The Commission's recommendations led to the Soulbury Constitution, which opened the way to dominion status.

The legal step in London was the Ceylon Independence Act, passed on 10 December 1947. Its opening words describe it as an Act for "the attainment by Ceylon of fully responsible status within the British Commonwealth of Nations". From the day appointed under the Act, the United Kingdom government had no further responsibility for governing Ceylon.

Elections for the new parliament were held in August 1947. The United National Party won, and Don Stephen Senanayake became Ceylon's first Prime Minister.

Parliament had two chambers. The Parliament of Sri Lanka records that the House of Representatives had 101 members. The Senate had 30, of whom 15 were elected by the House and 15 were nominated by the Governor-General. The Governor-General represented the British monarch as head of state.

The new state depended heavily on trade. Britannica names three export products at the time of independence: tea, rubber and coconuts. All three were selling well in world markets. The Ministry of Finance notes that export and import duties made up the bulk of tax revenue in the 1950s, which it describes as a reflection of the country's heavy dependence on external trade.

New institutions followed. The Ministry of Finance and the Treasury was formed in 1947. The Central Bank of Ceylon was formed in 1949, after a study by John Exter, an economist of the United States Federal Reserve. Ceylon became a member of the International Monetary Fund on 29 August 1950. D. S. Senanayake's own aim, the Ministry records, was to use the country's tanks and rivers to create rice-growing areas in the dry zone.

The arrangements of 1948 lasted for just over two decades. The Senate was abolished on 2 October 1971. In 1972 a new constitution made Ceylon the Republic of Sri Lanka. Britannica records that the country kept its link with the Commonwealth, that a president replaced the Governor-General as head of state, and that the two-chamber legislature gave way to a single chamber. The Parliament of Sri Lanka lists that chamber as the National State Assembly.

A further constitution in 1978 renamed the country the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka and gave the president executive power. The legislature has been called Parliament since then and has 225 members. Until April 1982 it met in the building facing the sea at Galle Face in Colombo, before moving to the new complex at Sri Jayewardenepura Kotte.