Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World by Kumari Jayawardena

Author:Kumari Jayawardena
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

Women in the Left Movement

In the early 1930s, a Youth League of radical nationalists and socialists was formed with branches all over Sri Lanka to agitate for national independence. This movement attracted many radical women, especially teachers who had been inspired by the events in India. When the anti-imperialist Suriya Mal Movement was formed in 1933 in opposition to the sale of poppies (for British ex-servicemen on Armistice Day), its best-known members were women: the president was Doreen Wickremasinghe, née Young, an English woman born in Cheshire in 1907 of a family of Labour Party activists. She went to the school (St Christopher’s at Letchworth) founded by Annie Besant and run by theosophists. On graduating from the London School of Economics in 1929, Doreen Young was secretary to Krishna Menon in the India League in London; she came to Sri Lanka in 1930 and became the principal of Sujata Vidyalaya, Matara. She married Dr S.A. Wickremasinghe (who later became the chairman of the Communist Party) and was appointed the principal of Ananda Balika Vidyalaya in Colombo. While at this school she organized the teachers (Lilian Bandaranaike, Eva de Mel, Helen de Alwis, Shirani Gamage and others) in the Suriya Mal campaign. In a pamphlet on the importance of the movement, Eileen Wirasekera and Helen de Alwis wrote:

Wear the Suriya flower on November 11th and demonstrate … your self-respect and independence … Register your refusal to encourage participation in Imperialist War. Every Suriya mala is a blow against Imperialism, Fascism and War. Wear the Suriya mala for freedom and peace. (Jayawardena 1974)

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