A Political Legacy of the British Empire—Power and the Parliamentary System in Post-Colonial India and Sri Lanka

As the British Empire receded, India and neighboring Sri Lanka, then known as Ceylon, preserved the "Westminster" -style political system left by their colonial rulers. Both South Asian countries became independent in the late 1940s in widely differing styles: India fought a violent campaign of mass political activism, becoming a republic under Prime Minister Nehru, while Sri Lanka's indigenous elite, among them future Prime Minister Bandaranaike, negotiated independence through a "gentleman's agreement." Here, Harshan Kumarasingham analyses the crucial first decade of independence for both countries. The impact of cultural conditions on the exercise of Westminster-style executive power gives an invaluable insight into the ambiguous and flexible tenets of the Westminster political system itself, as well as shedding light upon the development of India and Sri Lanka today. This book brings a new analytical model to bear upon a crucial nation-building era in countries where the needs of the wider population were often at odds with the aims of their westernized rulers.

Harshan Kumarasingham holds a PhD in Political History from Victoria University, Australia. He is Alexander Von Humboldt Research Fellow at Potsdam University, Henry Charles Chapman Fellow in Commonwealth Studies at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London and is Fellow at the Centre for Strategic Studies, New Zealand.