Donoughmore Constitution (1931)
The 1931 constitutional settlement that introduced universal adult franchise to Ceylon — and locked in a unitary State Council whose majoritarian arithmetic foreclosed Tamil federal proposals from the outset.
Donoughmore is the structural ancestor. By abolishing communal representation in favour of territorial seats inside a unitary State Council, the 1931 settlement created the demographic geometry that every subsequent Tamil resolution attempt has had to negotiate around — first via the 50-50 proposal, then federalism, then Vaddukoddai.
§1What it did
The Donoughmore Commission (1928) recommended, and the British implemented in 1931, the abolition of the Legislative Council's communal seat structure in favour of a State Council elected on universal adult franchise from territorial constituencies. Personal laws — Thesawalamai, Kandyan, Muslim — were preserved.
The unitary frame meant the numerically larger community would, in any normal election, hold the working majority. Tamil political leadership accepted the franchise expansion but began arguing immediately — through G.G. Ponnambalam's 50-50 proposal and later through S.J.V. Chelvanayakam's federalism — for constitutional safeguards against permanent minoritisation.
§2Why it sits in /case
Every Tamil-side resolution attempt catalogued in this archive — Bandaranaike–Chelvanayakam 1957, Dudley–Chelvanayakam 1965, Vaddukoddai 1976, Thimpu 1985, Indo-Lanka 1987, Norway 2002–03 — responds to the structural arithmetic that Donoughmore set in 1931 and that the 1972 and 1978 constitutions then hardened.