ABSTRACT
Liberal-minded Sinhala politicians, Sinhala thinkers and writers refer to Sri Lanka now, after the lessons of the civil war, as a multi-ethnic society. The Sri Lankan Tamil perception in contradistinction to the Sinhala one is that the island is an integral whole in which Sinhalese and Tamils enjoy equal rights, rights which should also include those whom the Sinhala hegemonists placed outside the pale, namely the Indian Tamil plantation workers. The Sinhala polity's perspective of the island is that it is "a numerocracy" by which is meant that the Sinhalese expect that as a numerical majority they have the first call on the state. A complicating factor is the rivalry and competition that has developed between the major Sinhala political parties, the United National Party and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party. The Tamil region needs to be exempted from draconian emergency powers that have been incorporated into the 1978 Sri Lankan constitution.
