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Monopoly socialism5/19/2023 ![]() He joined the Indian freedom struggle while hiding in India until the colonial police in India captured him as well as his wife Kusuma and imprisoned them in Bombay Jail.Īs a Trotskyite, Philip focused his vision of Trotskyism blending it with nationalism, rather than totally devoting his vision to Marxist theories. He assisted Spanish revolutionaries and helped them to smuggle revolutionary documents to the Pyrenees range of mountains by avoiding the border checkpoints between Spain and France.Īfter returning to Sri Lanka to launch the LSSP and its famous Suriyamal Campaign and social work during the Malaria epidemic, he continued to maintain close contacts with the Indian socialist leaders, which became useful when he crossed over to India with colleagues NM, Colvin and others after breaking out of Batticaloa Jail where he was imprisoned by the colonial rulers. In London, Philip was closely associated with fellow socialists from India such as Jayaprakash Narayan, Jawaharlal Nehru and Kirshna Menon and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya. “My father met her and worked with other people who joined freedom struggles in Spain,” she said. Philip’s daughter Lakmini Gunawardena told this writer some years ago that the niece of the Mexican revolutionist Calderón came to Sri Lanka. He was one of the most influential and controversial personalities in the development of modern Mexico. ![]() Calderón was an important Mexican writer, philosopher, and politician. In New York he joined the radical group headed by José Vasconcelos Calderón, called the “cultural caudillo” of the Mexican Revolution. Hence, he launched the new vision of ‘National Socialism’ loosely translated as ‘Jathika Samajavadaya’.Īs a youth he followed a radical revolutionary path that made him work in close collaboration with socialist leaders of many countries including in the United Kingdom, United States, Spain and India. de Silva and other pioneers of the Left movement, he realised soon that the foreign doctrine would have to be transformed to meet the people’s aspirations. Although Philip was known as the ‘Father of Marxism in Ceylon’ in his radical days when he launched the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) together with N.M. His courage was legendary and it earned him the sobriquet ‘Lion of Boralugoda’. Philip was a pragmatic leader who instinctively understood the hopes and aspirations of the people, a man close to the heartbeat of the nation. The radical leftist movements today could learn lessons from the legacy left by the Father of Socialism in Sri Lanka, Philip Gunawardena, whose genuine desire was to serve the downtrodden people using whatever the means available.
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