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As we have already observed in this column it is tragic that the Tamil National Question should have become part of the election football game or tug-of-war. But this has been the inevitable consequence of Sri Lanka's politics ever since the late Mr. D. S. Senanayake formed his Pan-Sinhala Cabinet during the time of the State Council paradoxically on the advice of the late Prof. C. Suntheralingam who ironically enough was also the first Tamil politician (admittedly later) to introduce the idea of a separate Tamil state into the Sri Lankan Tamil consciousness.

The rationale of the Pan-Sinhala Cabinet was that the Sinhalese as the main community should offer a united front to the British Government of the day, but that after Independence was obtained it could do justice to the other minority communities as they were called then. Accordingly in 1948 when Prime Minister D. S. Senanayake formed the first Government he invited both Mr. Suntheralingam and Mr. G. G. Ponnambalam, the leader of the All Ceylon Tamil Congress to join it. As Minister of Industries and Fisheries Mr. Ponnambalam (whose grandson is contesting the current election from the Jaffna district) set up several public corporations in the North such as the cement, salt and the chemical plants.

Mr. Ponnambalam's incorporation into the Senanayake Cabinet led to a rift with his deputy Mr. S. J. V. Chelvanayakam who left to form the Federal Party. While Mr. Ponnambalam envisaged a destiny for the Tamil people or the Jaffna Tamils as the community was called then in contradistinction to the Tamils of Indian origin led by Mr. S. Thondaman Mr. Chelvanbayakam saw the destiny of the Tamils as lying within the borders of a Federal state incorporating the North and the East. In order to meet this demand Prime Minister Bandaranaike proposed Regional Councils in 1957 and Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake proposed District Councils in 1968.

The first proposal was scuttled by a joint extra-parliamentary campaign of the UNP and the Maha Sangha and the second by a parliamentary campaign by the SLFP, LSSP and CP in which the most prominent role was played by the late R. G. Senanayake. It was a historical trajectory because the king-pin of the 1957 anti-RC campaign had been Mr. J. R. Jayewardene and in the folk lore of Sri Lanka's politics even a school child knew at the time that there was no love lost between the two.

This brings the story up to 1970 when the three parties which had opposed the District Councils formed the United Front Government and promulgated a new Constitution which established Sri Lanka as a Republic within the Commonwealth in 1972.

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