ABSTRACT
The stated objectives of the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord were ‘nurturing’ the ‘traditional friendship’ between India and Sri Lanka and ‘resolving the ethnic problem of Sri Lanka’. These were to be achieved by preserving the ‘unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Sri Lanka’ and by recognizing that ‘the Northern and Eastern provinces have been areas of historical habitation of the Sri Lankan Tamil speaking peoples, who have at all times hitherto lived together in this territory with other ethnic groups’. In accordance with the latter claim and in an attempt to create a Tamil majority area, the accord resolved to join the Northern and Eastern Provinces to form one administrative unit with one elected provincial council, one chief minister, and a board of ministers. It also called for a referendum to be held by 31 December 1988, to determine if the people of the Eastern Province wished for their Province to be joined to, or separated from, the Northern Province. The President’s discretion to postpone such a referendum was also stipulated. It was agreed that the governments of India and Sri Lanka ‘would cooperate in ensuring the physical security and safety of all communities inhabiting the Northern and the Eastern Provinces’. The accord also called for Tamil – which was already a national language under the 1978 constitution – to be an official language and re-imposed English as an official language along with Sinhala.1 The 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution, passed on 14 November 1987, introduced Provincial Councils and made Tamil an official language. Thus, Sri Lanka became the only sovereign state in the world where Tamil is an equal official language.2
