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Mind your language. It divides! – By Aubrey Joachim Nineteen Fifty-Six was a watershed moment in the history of Ceylon – now Sri Lanka, when the government of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike passed the Sinhala Only Bill as the first act of the new government of a leader who at the time could hardly speak the Sinhalese language. The Christian educated ‘silver-tongued-orator’ of Oxford had passed his senior Cambridge examinations with distinctions in English, Latin, Greek and French. No Sinhalese for this aristocratic son of Ceylon. However, at an election rally in Polonnaruwa in late 1955 Solomon West Ridgeway Dias (SWRD) Bandaranaike promised the masses ‘Sinhala – in twenty-four hours’. Thus the division began and the domino effect still goes on – wherever in the world Sri Lankans congregate. Language is defined as a means of communication between humans by way of speech, writing or gesture. It is ironic that while language ...