Hedi Stadlen - Colombo

Colombo

In Sri Lanka, the Left had split in 1940, when the Trotskyists in the Lanka Sama Samaja Party expelled the pro-Moscow faction, which formed the United Socialist Party (USP). The Keunemans joined the USP, which was fiercely anti-colonial until the invasion by Hitler of the Soviet Union, thereafter advocating co-operation with the colonial regime against the common enemy, Fascism.

Hedi Keuneman was elected president of one of the co-operative societies were formed to distribute affordable food, following the outbreak of war. She monitored food stocks and prices in central Colombo, popularising cheaper, local food cereals such as bajiri, a locally grown sticky grain, earning herself the nickname bajiri nona ('Bajiri Lady').

Between 1940 and 1942, Hedi Keuneman taught at University College, Colombo and at the Modern School initiated by another Communist emigrant and India League veteran, Doreen Young Wickremasinghe.

She was active in the Friends of the Soviet Union, and, with shoulder-length black hair and sometimes, barefoot in a red sari, distributed pro-Communist literature, and addressed meetings among English-speaking supporters. She also wrote a pamphlet publicising Hitler's tyranny, Under Nazi Rule.

In 1943 when the USP was dissolved and became the Communist Party of Ceylon, Pieter became its first general secretary. He and Hedi subsisted on boiled breadfruit and sambol, living modestly near the CP office in Borella.