Some background info... [I am posting this here only because I am bored of work....]
But in some sense, I am also driven to post this because 400% and 500% remarks seem to be popular one-liners here. And folks choose to have an opinion, independent of the fact that they know something about the subject matter or not, because that is the popular trend....
Taken from the book "The Break-Up of Sri Lanka" by A. Jeyaratnam Wilson, the son-in-law of Chelvanayakam.
The Soulbury Commission of 1947, with the adjustments made to fit it into an independent framework, had been predicated on definite safeguards for the minority ethnic and religious groups, and it survived longer (from 1947-8 to 1972) than any other Constitution of Ceylon is likely to do. The unexpressed premise of the Soulbury constitution was a consociational arrangement between the English-educated elites, of all the island's principal groups: communal (Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim), religious (Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Catholic, Protestant) and social (the various castes among the Sinhalese and Tamil communities). The more important safeguards provided for weightage in representation including Appointed Members (not exceeding six in number) in the popular House of Representatives, a second chamber (the Senate), a prohibition against legislation that discriminates against any of the groups (Section 29(2)(b)) and independent public services and judicial service commissions.
The Constitution had barely begun to take effect before these provisions began to be circumvented and defied, depending on Prime Ministers, the times and the circumstances. Thus the consociationalism that could have cemented the foundations of a pluralist democratic society disintegrated in stages, giving rise to dissatisfaction among the non-Buddhist Sinhalese communities. We shall examine the safeguards and the causes of their failure, and then investigate ways in which ethnic discontent became a malaise in the island polity.
Weightage in representation was the response of the Sinhalese leadership to the Tamil `fifty-fifty' demand (50% Sinhalese representation and 50% minority representation). The balance was upset in two glaring policy-decisions. First, as we remarked, there was disenfranchisement of the Indian Tamil population by legislation enacted in 1948 and 1949. At one stroke of the legislature pen, nearly half the Tamil population of the island (i.e. the Indian Tamils) lost all their seven seats in the House of Representatives, and in fourteen other electorates they lost their ability to influence the outcome; ten of these returned Trotskyite candidates and four (Moscow) Communist at the general election of 1947. The disenfranchisement reduced the total number of Indian Tamil seats in the House from seven to nil, and increased the Sinhalese seats by exactly the number of seats the Indian Tamils lost; the Sinhalese thereby increased their representation from 68 in 1947 to 75 at the 1952 general election.
Thereafter, Sinhalese representation continued to increase at the expense of the major ethnic minority, the Tamils. The table below indicates the extent to which consociationalism was abandoned by the Sinhalese elites in the desperately important area of parliamentary representation.
Representation is of primary concern to the ethnic and religious minorities, especially the Tamils, because the Tamil voting strength in the House can, on occasion, block the passing of a measure if there is disagreement between the major parties. However. some questions were of direct and bi-partisan relevance to the major ethnic group. Such were the disenfranchisement of the Indian Tamils (1948 and 1949), making Sinhalese the one and only official language (1956), the nationalization of schools, a matter of great importance to the minority Catholics and Protestants who owned and ran many of them (the laws of 1960 and 1961), and special recognition for Buddhism as the religion of the majority (the constitutions of 1972 and 1978). On these the major political parties either united or were not overt in their opposition. For example, the UNP in opposition opposed the nationalization of the schools legislation of 1960 and 1961. In office, despite an earlier pledge to the Roman Catholic Church that relief would be provided to its schools, the prime minister Dudley Senanayake reneged using the plea that he could `not unscramble scrambled eggs'. However, both the Catholic and the Protestant Churches resigned themselves to accepting the changes as part of an inevitable process of social change.
The Tamils, for their part, came to place increasing reliance on Section 29(2), (3) and (4) of the 1947-72 Soulbury Constitution. Section 29(1) stated: `Subject to the provisions of this Order, Parliament shall have power to make laws for the peace, order and good government of the Island.' However, Subsections (2), (3) and (4) contained the following inhibiting proviso:
(2) No such law shall -- [a long list of rights for religious and linguistic minorities]
Provided that no Bill for the amendment or repeal of any of the provisions of this Order shall be presented for the Royal Assent unless it has endorsed on it a certificate under the hand of the Speaker that the number of votes cast in favour thereof in the House of Representatives amounted to not less than two-thirds of the whole number of members of the House (including those not present).
For the last mentioned proviso to have effect, the Tamils had to ensure that their voting strength remained constant in the House or increased by way of sympathetic MPs; they could do the latter by influencing the outcome in constituencies where the major Sinhalese parties were evenly divided.
The Tamils were not able to ensure the conservation of their voting strength. This was, first, because Don Stephen Senanayake (1947-52) chose to break the compact on representation by his enactments disfranchising the Indian Tamils and depriving them of their citizenship in 1949 and 1949. Secondly, the same prime minister had set in motion the process of land settlement in the areas traditionally and politically recognized as the `traditional homelands of the Tamil-speaking people.' Irrigation schemes were launched in these Tamil territories, many parts of which were thinly populated or not populated. Sinhalese from the densely populated south-west quadrant of the island were settled in the newly-organized `colonization schemes', as these cane to be called. This implied a decline in voting strength and a threat to what had hitherto been an unexpressed right of possession by the Tamils of the Northern and Eastern provinces as their homelands. Consequently, some traditional Tamil constituencies have had significant increases in their number of Sinhalese voters.
......
The Indian Tamils were not the only group affected. Section 11(2) of the Constitution provided for the Governor General (on the advice of the prime minister) to appoint not more than six members to the House if an `important interest' was not represented or was inadequately represented. The intention was primarily to secure the representation of minority European, Burgher and perhaps Muslim interests. That was the spirit of the Constitution, but, as Sir Ivor Jennings pointed out, it could also have been used to appoint an Indian, a Ceylon Tamil or a Kandyan Sinhalese to Parliament. In the 1952 Parliament an Indian Tamil was appointed, which seemed especially necessary since there was not a single Indian representative in the House. However, the Bandaranaikes (1956-65) made use of this provision to nominate `depressed caste' Sinhalese in the House. The Muslim community also had a representative appointed from time to time, but there was no complaint against such appointments because the Muslims did not always obtain representation in the House at general elections proportionate to their population. The once influential Burgher community, numbering some 33000, realized that it had no future in Sri Lanka and most of them emigrated to Australia or Canada. Thus, fear of the oncoming trends forced one community to migrate to greener pastures within a few years of independence.
The Ceylon Tamil political leaders, despite the record of broken compacts by their Sinhalese counterparts, were nevertheless willing to enter into consociational relationships but no longer in a centralized unitary set-up. The Sinhalese political elites could have accommodated what were, in context, moderate Tamil demands. But political competition between the Sinhalese political parties, united Sinhalese fronts and Sinhalese Buddhist movements prevented an easy solution to the Tamil demands. Instead, the anxiety to buy off electors in the expectation of protecting and increasing the gains of the Sinhalese elites paved the way to their ultimate discomfiture and the subsequent undermining of their stable survival.
There is an unstated law ---- that of escalation of demands when reconciliation between ethnic groups is delated. The majority ethnic group's response is generally negative. If the minority ethnic groups show solidarity and inhabit contiguous territory, it becomes difficult to resist their demands. The better course then is to effect a compromise on the demands, but the general trend has been to deny concessions until they have lost their appeal, which results in a stepping-up of the minority ethnic group's demands. These demands take the form of separately carved-out communal electorates, and a measure of autonomy within a unitary or federal set-up. If these too fail, there is civil disobedience and non-violent non-cooperation from the minority ethnic leaders and their followers. If that strategy still fails to bring results, the politicized younger groups in the minority ethnic groups take up arms against a sea of troubles and win or lose in the resulting war. The stages are usually of this pattern. The Indian leadership was a case in point. Timely concessions to the Muslim leaders could have avoided the creation of Pakistan. And Pakistan could in like manner have avoided the creation of Bangladesh. In Ceylon, the Indian and Pakistani pattern of separation is being more or less repeated.
Ethnic distribution of parliamentary seats in SL 1947-1977
Categories are Year, Sinhalese, Ceylon Tamils, Muslims, Indian Tamils, Others, Total
Pre-independence/Pre-Soulbury Commission days (based on population) ----- 66 12 6 10 1 95
General Elections of 1947 ----- 68 13 6 7 1 95* [The total number of states in the House was 101, 6 being reserved for "Appointed MPs" by the Governor General on prime-ministerial advice]
General Elections of 1952 ----- 75 13 6 0 1 95** [The only difference between this elections and the last was that Indian Tamils were disenfranchised in 1949 and all 7 seats they had won in Amparai and Mattakalappu sectors (south-east) had been usurped by Sinhalese who became the new electoral majority as Ceylon Tamils were not dominant in these areas]
General Elections of 1956 ----- 75 0 0 0 0 -* [Elections boycotted by all non-Sinhalese parties]
[Seats due on the basis of population ---- 106 17 10 18 - 151
Seats obtained in March 1960 ---- 123 18 9 - 1 151
Seats obtained in July 1960 ------ 121 18 11 - 1 151
Seats obtained in 1965 ----------- 122 17 11 - 1 151
Seats obtained in 1970 ----------- 123 19 8 - 1 151
Seats obtained in 1977 ----------- 137 18 12 1 - 168 [The total number of seats was increased to 168, the class of appointed MPs was abolished in the 1972 Republican constitution]
So reading this, the lesson I get is, Sinhalese dont like a unitary set-up because it goes against the grain of their "bhumiputra" status in some sense. Welcome to reality.....
I hope they thought about it when they killed Prabhakaran's 12 year old son. There is a popular saying in Tamil "Aadu nalayudhenu onai kavalaipattucham", it can be loosely translated some thing like, "Fox was worrying about the goat's in the rain"
