Great Britain gained control of the whole island of Sri Lanka, in 1815 and administratively unified the island with a legislative council in 1833 with three Europeans and one each for Sinhalese, Sri Lankan Tamils and Burghers. British Governor William Manning, who arrived in Ceylon in 1919, created a reformed legislative council in 1921 and actively encouraged communal thinking in the legislative council. As a result, the Tamils started to develop communal consciousness and began to think of themselves as needing to be represented by Tamil leadership. It was this development that made way for the development of the Tamil political organization called the All Ceylon Tamil Congress headed by G. G. Ponnambalam.

Sri Lanka achieved independence from the British in 1948 and in the same year the government of Sri Lanka, with the acceptance vote from G.G. Ponnambalam, passed a new act called the Ceylon Citizenship Act which disenfranchised the Indian Tamil plantation workers Though Ponnambalam did not vote for all the bills pertaining to the Ceylon citizenship act (including the offending bill), his silence in parliament made the Tamil public believe that he was not interested in Indian Tamil rights. . In 1949 a new Tamil political party, named the Federal Party, was formed and was led by S. J. V. Chelvanayakam who earlier broke away from All Ceylon Tamil Congress because of the latter's decision to tie up with the UNP. 

In 1956 the government enacted another act called the Official Language Act (better known as the Sinhala Only Act) which made the Sinhala as the sole official language of Sri Lanka. The Ceylon Citizen Act and the Sinhala Only Act were seen as discriminatory policies towards the minorities and led to increased ethnic and political tensions between the two communities. The Federal Party (FP) opposed both the Ceylon Citizenship Act and the Sinhala Only Act and as a result became popular amongst the Tamil population . As a result of their popularity the Federal party became the most dominant party in the Tamil districts after the 1956 elections.

Sri Lanka
Central issue and historic development
Development
LTTE's Interim Self Governing Authority