page_title: Dominion of Ceylon
section_title: Army
hierarchical_section_title: Dominion of Ceylon / Military / Army
caption_attribution_description: English: Guard of Honor for Brigadier James Sinclair, Earl of Caithness, held by Major B.R. Heyn
context_page_description: Between 1948 and 1972, Ceylon was an independent country in the Commonwealth of Nations that shared a monarch with Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and certain other sovereign states. In 1948, the British Colony of Ceylon was granted independence as Ceylon. In 1972, the country became a republic within the Commonwealth, and its name was changed to Sri Lanka.
context_section_description: At the end of World War II, the Ceylon Defence Force, the predecessor to the Ceylon Army, began demobilisation. After Independence, Ceylon entered the bi-lateral Anglo-Ceylonese Defence Agreement of 1947. This was followed by Army Act No. 17 of which was passed by Parliament on 11 April 1949, and formalised in Gazette Extraordinary No. 10028 of 10 October 1949. It marked the creation of the Ceylon Army, consisting of a regular and volunteer force, the latter being the successor of the disbanded Ceylon Defence Force. The Defence Agreement of 1947 provided assurance that British would come to the aid of Ceylon in the event it was attacked by a foreign power and provided British military advisers to build the country's military. Brigadier James Sinclair, The Earl of Caithness, was appointed as general officer commanding Ceylon Army, as such becoming the first commander of the Ceylon Army.
  Due to a lack of any major external threats the growth of the army was slow, and the primary duties of the army quickly moved towards internal security by the mid-1950s. The first internal security operation of the Ceylon Army, code named Operation Monty, began in 1952 to counter the influx of illegal South Indian immigrants brought in by smugglers, in support of Royal Ceylon Navy coastal patrols and police operations. This was expanded and renamed as Task Force Anti-Illicit Immigration (TaFII) in 1963 and continued up to 1981. The Army was mobilised to help the police to restore peace under provincial emergency regulations during the 1953 hartal, the 1956 Gal Oya Valley riots and in 1958 it was deployed for the first time under emergency regulations throughout the island during the 1958 riots
  In 1962 several volunteer officers attempted a military coup, which was stopped hours before it was launched. This attempted coup affected the military to a great extent; since the government mistrusted the military, it reduced the size and growth of the army, especially the volunteer force, with several units being disbanded. In May 1972, Ceylon was proclaimed a republic and changed its name from Ceylon to the "Republic of Sri Lanka", and in 1978 to "Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka". All Army units were renamed accordingly.
caption: The Earl of Caithness inspecting a guard unit
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