Declaring and disabling: TNPF neutralises Tamil sovereignty, self-determination & referendum

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 January 2026, 15:02 GMT]
The federal framework advanced by the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF), rooted in the 2016 Tamil People’s Council (TPC) proposals, is presented in that section as preserving Tamil sovereignty and self-determination and retaining the possibility of a referendum. A closer constitutional reading reveals the opposite. While employing the language of pre-constitutional agreement, inalienable self-determination, sovereignty, homeland, and claims of popular legitimacy through referendum, the framework systematically contracts each of these claims through clause design and enforcement logic. What emerges is not transition, but neutralisation by design.

Political struggles are rarely abandoned openly.

More often, they are reshaped through language that appears affirming while narrowing the space of action.

In constitutional politics, rights are not defined by what is declared, but by what is enabled, contracted, and overridden.

This article examines how the TNPF/TPC framework follows this pattern by declaring rights at the surface, narrowing them structurally, and overriding them at the moment of political choice. In doing so, it shows how self-determination is transformed into an internal, outcome-bound arrangement, how territoriality is diluted by the language of the Indo–Lanka Agreement (1987), and how a standing “nuclear option” is embedded to pre-empt any attempt at a referendum.



Since 2016, the language of pre-constitutional agreement, inalienable self-determination, distinct sovereignty, plurinationalism, and claims of popular legitimacy through referendum has re-emerged in Tamil political discourse. The TNPF, through the TPC proposals first articulated that year, has advanced a federal framework that draws upon these principles while subjecting them to structural dilution and selective abandonment.

This framework has now been formally endorsed in the TNPF’s 2024 Parliamentary Election Manifesto (page 10).



At the same time, TNPF leader Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam has repeatedly stated in public forums that the party demands complete self-determination and distinct sovereignty, that a referendum remains possible, and that the proposal could function as a transition.

The framework he defends, however, does the opposite: it converts these claims into declaratory language while disabling their exercise through contractual and enforcement mechanisms.

This analysis builds upon earlier TamilNet commentary published at the time the TPC draft was first issued and subsequent TamilNet analyses examining how federal frameworks risk dislodging Tamil self-determination and the referendum principle.

While those articles located the problem within Tamil political doctrine and historical continuity, the present article focuses specifically on constitutional structure, clause interaction, and enforcement logic.

It also draws conceptually on extended analytical essays published on TamilNet’s Substack, including ஈழத்தமிழர் சுயநிர்ணய உரிமைக் கோட்பாடு, to clarify why inalienable self-determination cannot be internally contained without being negated.

This article does not assess intentions or rhetoric. It examines the internal logic, clause interaction, and constitutional effect of the framework itself.

That examination reveals a coherent design: declaration at the surface, contraction in the middle, and override at the point of choice.

• • •

I. The foundational flaw: pre-constitutional agreement claimed, constitution imposed

The TPC proposal repeatedly emphasises the need for a pre-constitutional agreement among the island's peoples before a constitution is drafted. In constitutional theory, a pre-constitutional agreement, or social contract, addresses questions that must be resolved before institutions are designed: whether peoples wish to associate at all, on what terms association is voluntary, which political futures remain open, and how withdrawal of consent is to be handled.

A genuine pre-constitutional agreement does not design institutions. It defines conditions of consent.

Yet the TPC proposal presents a fully articulated model constitution rather than a model agreement. This reverses the only legitimate sequence—pre-constitutional agreement followed by a constitution—into a constitution followed by a request for consent.

This contradiction was already identified in TamilNet’s first response to the TPC draft, which warned that externally framed constitutional outlines were being presented in place of an indigenous political programme of struggle. On closer examination, it becomes clear that this inversion is not merely political but structural: once the constitutional form is fixed, consent can no longer operate at the level of political status.

This is not pre-constitutionalism. It is post-constitutional consent extraction.

Once this inversion occurs, everything that follows becomes predictable.

• • •

II. The concealed category shift: internal self-determination without naming it

Although the proposal avoids the explicit term “internal” self-determination, its structure unmistakably reproduces that category.

Internal self-determination is not an established, independent legal principle in international law. It does not appear in the UN Charter or in binding treaties. It emerged instead as a restrictive doctrinal interpretation, developed largely to contain the consequences of external self-determination by reducing it to autonomy, participation, or devolution within an existing state.

An inalienable right of self-determination cannot be internalised, because internal self-determination is, by definition, outcome-bound.

Yet the TPC/TNPF framework does precisely this.

It employs the language of inalienable self-determination, links its exercise to a united and undivided state, and imposes sanctions on any attempt to determine political status.

The result is a category contradiction: external self-determination in language, internal self-determination in substance.

• • •

III. Contracting clauses: how declared rights are narrowed in practice

The proposal operates through contracting clauses—provisions that appear to recognise rights, but immediately limit or negate their effect elsewhere. Three clauses must be read together. Clause 1.4 recognises self-determination but binds it to an undivided state. Clause 2.1 declares that sovereignty vests in the distinct peoples, but does not allocate final authority. Clause 21.1 authorises an emergency takeover when a political unit is deemed to be “seeking to secede”.

These concerns were already articulated in political terms by early TamilNet commentary, which warned that conceding the power to dissolve a State government on allegations of secessionism would effectively reaffirm the logic of the Sixth Amendment. What structural analysis reveals is that this is not an inconsistency but a design.

Declaratory clauses create the appearance of recognition. Contracting clauses narrow the scope of permissible action. Enforcement clauses ensure that any attempt to test the boundary is overridden.

In constitutional reality, when clauses conflict, enforcement prevails.

• • •

IV. Territory diluted through inherited administrative language

The same pattern of declaration followed by contraction appears in the treatment of territory.

In the section addressing the need for a political agreement before constitutional enactment, the proposal states that the treaty should recognise the Tamil people’s right to self-determination, sovereignty, constituent power, and traditional homeland “in the areas of historical habitation of the Tamil people”.

This formulation is not neutral.

The phrase “areas of historical habitation” originates in the Indo–Lanka Accord of 1987 and was deliberately crafted as a substitute for recognition of a Tamil traditional homeland, acknowledging demographic presence while denying political territoriality (habitation denotes a sociological fact; homeland denotes a political right).

Earlier TamilNet analysis criticised the TPC draft for ambiguous and concessionary language that sidestepped clear assertions of nationhood. Independently, the phrase “areas of historical habitation” derives from the Indo–Lanka Accord’s formula, which was designed to acknowledge demographic presence while denying political territoriality.

A homeland implies a territorial basis for sovereignty and constituent power. “Historical habitation” implies no such entitlement. It leaves boundaries subject to redefinition, administrative reconfiguration, and demographic engineering.

Thus, even at the level of the proposed treaty, territoriality is already contracted.

• • •

V. Internal self-determination without referendum: structural denial

Internal self-determination can claim democratic legitimacy only if it is freely chosen as an alternative.

That choice requires either a referendum on political status or an uncoerced electoral mandate explicitly offering that option.

The proposal offers neither. It does not even state that a referendum is postponed. Instead, any referendum that meaningfully addresses political status would be immediately construed as “seeking secession”.

At that point, Clause 21.1 is triggered.

Thus the referendum is not denied verbally; it is structurally pre-empted. The deferral becomes visible only when the enforcement logic is examined. This concern was reiterated in later TamilNet analysis warning that federalism was being used to dislodge the referendum principle itself.

A right that cannot be exercised without sanction is not preserved.

• • •

VI. Clause 21.1 as a built-in nuclear option: comparison with Spain

The practical effect of Clause 21.1 becomes clearer when compared with Spain.

Spain’s Constitution declares the indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation and empowers the central government, through Article 155, to suspend regional self-government. These provisions were invoked in 2017 to invalidate the Catalan referendum and dissolve the Catalan government. Constitutional scholars have described this as the deployment of a “nuclear option”.

Spain’s position was coercive but transparent.

The right to external self-determination was denied openly, and the override mechanism was framed as exceptional.

The TNPF/TPC framework is more insidious.

It recognises self-determination rhetorically, binds its outcome constitutionally, and installs a standing nuclear option triggered not by violence or institutional breakdown, but by the act of seeking political choice itself.

Where Spain says, “You do not have this right,” this framework says, “You have this right—but we will intervene if you attempt to exercise it.”

Clause 21.1 thus functions as a normalised Article 155 embedded within a framework that claims to recognise sovereignty and self-determination, a danger previously flagged in TamilNet commentary on indissoluble sovereignty traps.

• • •

VII. Vaddukkoaddai (1976–1977): last resort already exhausted

The Vaddukkoaddai Resolution of 1976 explicitly recorded the failure of internal constitutional experiments and articulated the Tamil people’s claim to external self-determination.

That claim was democratically mandated through the TULF manifesto victory in the 1977 General Elections, the last free and fair mandate on Tamil political status. Political historian A. J. Wilson records that Thanthai S. J. V. Chelvanayakam treated this decision as final. Vaddukkoaddai was not an escalation. It was closure.

• • •

VIII. Why later elections cannot override this mandate

The 1983 Sixth Amendment criminalised advocacy for Tamil political status, foreclosing free political choice and making all subsequent elections structurally incapable of replacing the Vaddukkoaddai mandate.

No referendum has been possible since. No election has offered the primary political-status question openly.

Internal self-determination, therefore, cannot be presumed. It must be explicitly chosen, and it never has been.

• • •

IX. Diaspora re-mandate and Tamil Nadu Assembly resolution

The Vaddukkoaddai mandate was reaffirmed, not abandoned.

In 2009–2010, Tamil diaspora referenda in ten countries reaffirmed the demand for an independent Tamil Eelam. On 27 March 2013, the Tamil Nadu State

Assembly unanimously called for a referendum on Tamil Eelam.

Any framework that substitutes internal self-determination without a referendum contradicts all three mandates simultaneously.

• • •

X. The external-force question (posed, not asserted)

TamilNet has argued that such frameworks may reflect external strategic pressures aimed at dislodging the Tamil national question from its historical legal footing and converting it into an internal administrative issue.

This article does not assert orchestration. It demonstrates that the effect aligns with that outcome regardless of intention.

In constitutional analysis, effect is decisive.

• • •

Conclusion: how neutralisation is achieved

The failure of the TNPF/TPC federal proposal is not accidental or technical. It is structural.

Pre-constitutional consent is claimed but constitutionally foreclosed. External self-determination is invoked but internally contained. Sovereignty is declared but selectively withdrawn. Territoriality is acknowledged but diluted through inherited administrative language. Referendum is acknowledged rhetorically but disabled structurally. A nuclear override is embedded at the precise moment of political choice.

Spain denies the right openly.
This framework declares the right and disables it.

That is not a transition.
It is neutralisation by design.

Chronology: