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Sri Lanka Tamil Politics
Some political commentators hold that it was in the wake of
the 1956 elections that two completely separate and basically
hostile political systems emerged in Sri Lanka: one for the
Sinhalese and another for the Tamils. The trend toward Tamil
exclusivity, however, despite periods of accommodation with
Sinhalese political parties, had begun developing before
independence. The first political organization to be formed
specifically to protect the welfare of an ethnic minority was the
All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC), which G.G. Ponnambalam founded
in 1944. The Tamil Congress attempted to secure adequate
constitutional safeguards before the country attained its
independence. These attempts reflected Tamil anxieties that
British domination would simply give way to domination by the
Sinhalese majority.
After independence, a dissident Tamil group in the ACTC
emerged under the leadership of S.J.V. Chelvanayakam. The new
group disagreed with Ponnambalam's policy of collaboration with
the intercommunal, but Sinhalese-dominated, UNP. In 1949 the
dissidents broke away from the ACTC and formed the rival Federal
Party, which proposed establishing an autonomous Tamil linguistic
state within a federal union of Sri Lanka. The Federal Party
regarded this alternative as the only practical way to preserve
Tamil identity.
In 1956 the Federal Party emerged as the dominant Tamil
political group as a result of its convincing victory over the
conservative Tamil Congress. The Federal Party had a distinct
advantage because the Tamil Congress had suffered considerably
from the stigma of its association with the UNP (which had
abandoned its policy of making both Sinhala and Tamil national
languages in an attempt to obtain the support of the numerically
greater Sinhalese vote).
The Federal Party continued to consolidate its strength and
became an important player in national politics. In 1965 the
party became a component of the UNP-led coalition government by
committing its bloc of parliamentary seats to the UNP, which at
that time needed the Federal Party's support to form a stable
parliamentary majority. In 1968 however, the Federal Party
withdrew from the UNP government because its leaders were
convinced that the party could no longer derive any tangible
benefits from further association with the UNP. In 1970 the
Federal Party campaigned independently, unlike the Tamil
Congress, whose leaders called on the Tamils to join a united
front with the Sinhalese.
Data as of October 1988
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