This document was adopted unanimously by the Socialist Equality Party (Sri Lanka) at its founding congress in Colombo, 27–29 May, 2011. It is vital for a deeper understanding of the problems of development of the revolutionary movement on the Indian subcontinent. It draws the critical lessons of the Fourth International's 75-year struggle for Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution in South Asia.

The founding in 1942 of the Bolshevik Leninist Party of India (BLPI), by leaders of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) who had escaped British jails in Ceylon, marked a decisive advance for the Fourth International in Asia. The document traces the rise, decline and ultimate betrayal of the LSSP, which joined the 1964 coalition government of Madame Sirima Bandaranaike, abandoning the struggle to unify the Tamil and Sinhalese working class, and opening the road to the bloody 25-year civil war from 1983 to 2009.

The SEP’s forerunner, the Revolutionary Communist League (RCL), was founded in 1968 to draw the necessary political lessons from the LSSP’s betrayal and to rearm the working class politically on the basis of the Trotskyist program fought for by the ICFI. The document sums up the lessons of the RCL’s principled and courageous struggle against all forms of nationalism and communalism.