Last year’s anti-government uprising in Sri Lanka was followed with surprise and solidarity around the world. For many, its iconic moment came with scenes of common people cooling themselves in the swimming pool of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa after storming and occupying his official residence, compelling the despised head of state to flee the country before resigning.

Comparisons were sometimes made between the popular movement of 2022 and an earlier protest upsurge on this island in the Indian Ocean. Seventy years ago this month, on August 12, 1953, there was “a demonstration of the tremendous power of the masses in action,” as its best historian described it. Influenced by left parties and trade unions, the mass movement of 1953 shook the country, which was then known as Ceylon.

Ceylon had secured its de jure “flag independence” from Britain five years before. But the declining imperial power still controlled the primary export of tea and other economic sectors and maintained military bases in strategic locations. It had bequeathed a political system modeled on Westminster and headed by the British monarch to the new state, transferring power to a loyal elite that was joined to it by class and culture.