1956 anti-Tamil pogrom

The 1956 anti-Tamil pogrom, also known as the Gal Oya riots, was the first organised pogrom against Sri Lankan Tamils in the Dominion of Ceylon. It began with anti-Tamil rioting in Colombo, followed by anti-Sinhalese rioting in Batticaloa. The worst of the violence took place in the Gal Oya valley, where local majority Sinhalese colonists and employees of the Gal Oya Development Board commandeered government vehicles, dynamite and weapons and massacred minority Tamils. It is estimated that over 150 people, mostly Tamils, had died during the violence. The police and army were eventually able to bring the situation under control.

Background information

By 1956, 50% of clerical jobs were held by Tamils, although they were a minority of the country's population. This was partly due to the availability of Western style education built by American missionaries in the Tamil dominant Jaffna peninsula during the colonial era. The overrepresentation of Tamils was used by populist Sinhalese politicians to come to political power by promising to elevate the Sinhalese people. The pro-Sinhalese nationalist Freedom Party came to power in 1956 promising to make Sinhala, the language of the majority Sinhalese people, the sole official language.

Gal Oya settlement scheme

Gal Oya settlement scheme was begun in 1949 to settle landless peasants in formerly jungle land. Gal Oya river in the Eastern province was dammed and a tank was created with  of irrigated land. In 1956 the settlement had over 50 new villages where over 5,000 ethnic Tamil, Muslim, Indigenous Veddha and Sinhalese were settled. The Sinhalese were approximately 50% of the settlers. Sinhalese and others were spatially separated from each other as Sinhalese were settled at the more productive headwaters of the Gal Oya tank and the Tamils and Muslims at the down rivers closer to their former native villages. Settlement of large number of Sinhalese peasants in what Tamil nationalists considered their traditional Tamil homeland, was a source of tension within the settlement area.

Riots

Federalist satyagraha attacked
The riots start on 5 June 1956, while the Official language bill was debated in the Parliament in Colombo. About 200 Tamils led by 12 MPs of the Tamil Federal party conducted a silent satyagraha, a nonviolent sit-in protest, outside the parliament building. They were attacked and stoned by Sinhalese mobs. A Federalist politician was stripped and chased across the Galle Face Green. The police did not intervene, as they had been ordered not to interfere. The mobs had been led by two Sinhalese parliamentarians, one of which was K. M. P. Rajaratne. Some of the Tamil protestors were thrown into the Beira lake.

Riots spread in Colombo
The mob also stoned peaceful Tamil protesters as they marched to board a train heading back to Batticaloa at the Fort railway station. The same mob, after listening to a speech by populist Sinhalese politicians urging them to boycott Tamil businesses, then went on a spree of arson and looting in the city. Every Tamil seen on the streets of Colombo was then attacked by the mob, including Tamil office workers going from home from work. Over 150 Tamil owned shops were looted and many people were hospitalized for their injuries. Tamil senator S. Nadesan gave his account about the event:

“Hooligans, in the very precincts of Parliament House, under the very nose of the Prime Minister of this country, set upon those innocent men seated there, bit their ears and beat them up mercilessly. Not one shot was fired while all this lawlessness to persons were let loose... Why? Orders had been given: 'Do not shoot, just look on.' 

Thereafter… every Tamil man was set upon and robbed. He was beaten up. His fountain pen and wristlet were snatched away. He was thrashed mercilessly, humiliated and sent home. The police were looking on while all this was happening before their very eyes.

Shops were looted... but the police did nothing... specific instructions had been given to the police that they should not shoot, should not arrest, should not deal with the lawlessness and disorder that was let loose... rowdies and hooligans were given a free hand to assault, humiliate and rob any innocent Tamil walking the roads on that day.'

Eventually order was restored in Colombo after police opened fire on the rioting mobs, wounding eight in the process.

Attacks on Sinhalese in the Batticaloa-Kalmunai area
Following the riots in Colombo, Tamils in Batticaloa attacked Sinhalese. Sinhalese fishermen were assaulted and their houses and other property were burnt. In one case, a Sinhalese hotel was burned. An employee of this hotel emerged from the burning hotel and fired at a crowd that had gathered to watch the conflagration, killing two. Police had also fired on crowd of 10,000 demonstrating Tamils, killing another two. Several Sinhalese families took refuge in the Buddhist temple and hospital and complained that government authorities had not given them adequate support.

Further south in the Batticaloa District, there had been further attacks on Sinhalese, including an attack on a car with Sinhalese. Tamils from Karaitivu had thrown stones at Gal Oya Board trucks. Near Kalmunai, a group of 11 Tamils hid in trees and shot at a convoy of Sinhalese civilians and government officials, killing two.

Gal Oya
On 9 June, the trucks that had been stoned arrived in Gal Oya. News of the attacks on Sinhalese in the Batticaloa-Kalmunai area started reaching the valley, and with it, false rumours. The chief amongst the rumours was that a Sinhalese girl had been raped and made to walk naked down the street in Batticaloa by a Tamil mob. Although this was later proved to be false, the rumor inflamed the passions of the mob and led to further massacres and property destruction. On 11 June, agitated Sinhalese mobs began roaming the streets of Gal Oya valley looking for Tamils to physically assault. Some Tamils were dangerously clubbed on their skulls and admitted to hospital. Properties owned by Tamils, including those of Indian Tamils, were looted and burned down. It was rumored that the local police made no attempt to control the mob.

Tamil refugees from Amparai had fled to the Amparai police station and the Circuit Bungalow under police protection. On the evening of 12 June, a Sinhalese mob surrounded the latter location, threatening to break in. At first, police used tear gas to try and disperse the mob. The mob tried to stop a jeep with a Bren gun; at this point, the police opened fire, killing three of rioters. Then the mob severed the utilities and stole dynamite from a dynamite dump in Inginiyagala to try to blow up the bungalow. They were unable to acquire detonators, and by 11 PM, the military arrived and disperse the crowd. After this, Sinhalese rioters took vehicles went on a rampage against Tamils, assaulting Tamils and killing some. The Tamils in Gal Oya fled to areas outside the Gal Oya valley. In return, Tamil mobs went burning irrigation and construction camps on the border of the Gal Oya area and shot a number of Sinhalese.

On the morning of 13 June, a truck arrived with Sinhalese refugees from Bakiela who had been attacked by Tamil colonists. By noon of that day, there were further rumors that an army of 6,000 Tamils armed with guns were in the process of approaching the Sinhalese settlements in the Gal Oya valley. This led local groups of Sinhalese men to commandeer government vehicles to travel to outlying Tamil villages while Sinhalese officials and settlers fled. It was only after the arrival of army reinforcements and stern action taken by them that the killings and destruction were suppressed. Deputy Inspector-General of Police Sydney de Zoysa personally went to Gal Oya valley and threatened local politicians with arrest if they incited the mob to violence, even if they were Cabinet Ministers.   

Journalist Tarzie Vittachi states that over 150 civilians were killed in the entire Gal Oya valley during the entirety of the riots. Historian James Manor similarly states that scores of Tamils, certainly well over a 100, were massacred in Gal Oya.

Parliamentary Debates
The  riots were discussed in detail in parliament. 

Pieter Keuneman, third member for Colombo Central noted that, while the Eastern Province had a history of communal rioting, the events of June 1956 dwarfed them. He contended that explanations completely attributing the violence to factors peculiar to the Gal Oya valley, such as labor strikes, food shortages, or resentment against the administration, was not sufficient, and instead argued that the riots took place in the context of earlier incidents against Sinhalese in the Batticaloa-Kalmunai area. He also argued that there were too few police in the Gal Oya valley, and that the government should be more careful when forming mixed colonies, where he noted most of the violence took place. He called for a commission of inquiry.

On 26 July 1956, S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, the leader of the Federal Party commented on the violence and expressed his wish for an investigation:

"The Hon. Prime Minister announced that he was going to appoint a commission of inquiry into the riots at Gal Oya and elsewhere in the Batticaloa District. I wish he would include in the scope of the inquiry several other places where crowds or individuals attacked Tamil people or Sinhalese people, whoever they may be; people were attacked in Colombo, in Hambantota and in various other places. It is true that in Batticaloa and between Batticaloa and Kalmunai the offenders were Tamils but the scale of such attacks never rose to the level of riots. If rioting took place at all it was on the 5th and 6th in Colombo and on the 11th and 12th at Gal Oya."

Casualties

See also
 List of riots in Sri Lanka
 Sri Lankan Civil War

Notes

Sources

References

Further reading
  Buddhist Nationalism and religious violence in Sri Lanka – Prof. Nicholas Gier

1956 riots
1956 in Ceylon
History of Sri Lanka (1948–present)
Sri Lankan Tamil politics
Ethnic riots
Riots and civil disorder in Sri Lanka
Massacres in Sri Lanka
Mass murder in 1956
June 1956 events in Asia