To pull back a bit, in his Five Lectures, the JVP’s founder-leader Rohana Wijeweera had pointed to the fact that Ceylon was still ruled by the queen of the former colonial power, Britain, a fact which for him, was prove of the incomplete character of our Independence. The question of the relationship or lack thereof, between Sri Lanka and the British monarchy was made explicitly clear at great length in 1972 during the promulgation of the first Republican Constitution of Sri Lanka. Mine is not a private sentiment of a left-leaning political scientist. Except for the usual condolences, it is decidedly not a matter for the Sri Lankan State and nation.
Whatever sentiments we may have for the departed Queen Elizabeth, mourning is a private and at best a social matter. Why should Sri Lanka as a state lower its National Flag and observe days of National Mourning on the occasion of the death of a foreign monarch? Why should it do so especially when the monarch in question is the sovereign of the country from which Sri Lanka wrested its Independence, the 75 th anniversary of which it is about to celebrate? This is explicitly clear in every republican Constitution from that of the USA (“We the People”) to Sri Lanka. A republic is defined by the fact that sovereignty arises from and ultimately resides in the people: ‘res publica’.
In stark contradistinction, in a republic the people are sovereign. Whichever the case, the monarch was coterminous with, even synonymous, with ‘the sovereign’. When the monarchy receded in history but was retained ceremonially, the monarch was not so much acknowledged but conceded to be the country’s sovereign. Monarchy anywhere and everywhere at any time in history, acknowledged the monarch as the sovereign. The Queen was and King Charles will be the sovereign of the United Kingdom. Since the Sri Lankan state is a republic, there is no call whatsoever for state buildings to lower the Sri Lankan national flag to half-mast in honor of the British Queen or any monarch anywhere. In the second place, Sri Lanka is a Republic, which is the exact antipode of a monarchy. In the first place, Queen Elizabeth is not our queen.
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