Kotelavala, John Lionel

Born in the family of Ceylon Colonial Police Inspector John Kotelavala. In 1915 , when he became involved in the movement for independence from Great Britain , he was forced to emigrate in order to avoid arrest. He first settled in France , then studied agronomy at the Cambridge College of Christ . Upon returning to his homeland he entered the military service and by 1942 he rose to the rank of colonel, the highest in the colonial army of Ceylon. At the same time, as a supporter of his distant relative, Don Stephen Senanayake , was repeatedly a deputy at first to the Legislative and then to the State Council of Ceylon. In 1947, he was elected to the first parliament of the country and became the Minister of Communications and Public Works in the Senanayake government, and in 1948, after Ceylon gained independence, he was elected to the Senate. When Senanayaka passed away in 1952 , Kotelavala was seen as his obvious successor, but at the insistence of Governor General Lord Solberi, the United National Party opted for the deceased's son, Dudley Senanayake . Kotelavala, in turn, after the parliamentary elections of the same year, became the majority leader in the lower house. Already in 1953, after the unrest caused by rising rice prices and cuts in social benefits, Senanayake resigned, and Kotelavala became the new Prime Minister. In this post, adhering, like his predecessors, to anti-communist positions, he sought to somewhat reduce the country's political dependence on Great Britain and advocated the development of relations with other Asian countries, regardless of their ideology. In particular, in 1955 he took part in the Bandung Conference , where, among other things, he held talks with the head of the PRC government , Zhou Enlai . In the same year, Ceylon joined the UN . When the authority of Lord Salberi expired, Kotelaval chose not the British, but the Ceylon Oliver Gunetilleke as his successor. At the same time, Kotelavala, unlike Senanayake Sr., received a knighthood from Elizabeth II . However, successes in foreign policy were not accompanied by successes in the field of economics and overcoming interethnic disagreements, and the opposition Freedom Party won from the left-nationalist positions in the 1956 election. Kotelavala, leaving the post of head of government, retired to the UK, but later returned to his homeland. In 1967, he tried to return to politics, proposing his candidacy for the post of governor-general, but Dudley Senanayake, who at that time again headed the ONP and the government, chose to extend the term of office of William Gopallava for a second term. The day before the death of Kotelavala, his same-party president, President Jayawardene, awarded him the rank of general.