Charting Uncertain Futures: Diaspora, Citizenship and Belonging among Up-country Tamils While the CWC has dominated Up-country Tamil politics for decades, its power has been slipping ever since Saumiyamurthy Thondaman’s death in 1999. Although Arumugam Thondaman has inherited his grandfather’s ability to shift with the political winds and ally himself with whichever party is in power, he has done so with increasingly diminishing returns, for the up-country, at least, if not for himself. Of course, numerous other parties have always been active in the up-country, though it is only recently that they have been able to secure a major political presence in government. The political success of these other Up-country Tamil parties is a healthy sign of democracy that will have long-term benefits for the community, but it has until recently tended to be a source of division. Successive governments have been adept at playing various Up-country Tamil political parties against each other, further diluting their power and increasing their reliance and allegiance to governing coalitions. Despite these developments, Up-country Tamils in general have much more faith in the power of democracy than other ethnic groups on the island. While over three quarters of Up-country Tamils in a 2004-2005 survey felt that their votes could make a difference, the highest of any ethnic group on the island, they also had the lowest level of satisfaction with democracy among all ethnic groups (Uyangoda and Peiris 2009, 69–71). Up-country Tamils strongly believe in democracy’s ability to enact change in theory, but are regularly disappointed by democracy in practice. Multiple, overlapping reasons explain why Up-country Tamils retain strong beliefs in the power of electoral democracy. First, after struggling for decades to regain citizenship and the 15