Gratien Fernando

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Gratien Fernando (1915 – 1942) was the leader of the Cocos Islands Mutiny, an agitator for the freedom of Sri Lanka from the British and a hero of the Sri Lanka Independence Struggle.

Wathumullage Gratien Hubert Fernando was born to Sinhalese Buddhist parents. His father was a superintendent at the Ceylon Telegraph Office.

He went to school at St. Thomas’, Mt Lavinia. He was later converted to Roman Catholicism. He was impressed by the programme of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and by the anti-imperialist literature which it circulated.

He was very much an anti-racist in his attitude and at the beginning of the Second World War joined the Ceylon Garrison Artillery in order to fight fascism. He was shipped off with his unit first to the Seychelles and later to Horsburgh Island in the Cocos Islands.

Here, he argued with his officers and agitated for action among his colleagues: his agenda was the opening of the battle against British colonialism. He finally persuaded a core group to rebel, seize the island and signal the Japanese that they had done so.

On the night of 8/9 May, led by Fernando, men of the unit mutinied. However, their plan failed and the rebellion was suppressed the next day. The leaders of the mutiny were court-martialed and condemned within a week.

Fernando’s father petitioned the army authorities to commute the death penalty and asked Sir Oliver Ernest Goonetilleke, the Civil Defence Commissioner, to intercede with Admiral Sir Geoffrey Layton, the British Commander of Ceylon. However, when Layton interviewed Fernando, he was adamant that he did not wish to be reprieved or pardoned. He told his family 'I’ll never ask a pardon from the British: that would disgrace the cause. Many years hence the World may hear my story'.

He was executed on 4 August 1942 at Welikada Prison, and two other mutineers shortly thereafter. They were the only British Commonwealth troops to be executed for mutiny during the Second World War. Fernando showed defiance to the end, his last words being ‘Loyalty to a country under the heel of a white man is disloyalty’. He was buried at the Kanatte cemetery, Borella in an unmarked grave.