Up Country Tamils: Charting a New Future in Sri Lanka end of colonialism and the establishment of independence did not automatically resolve the many problems of colonialism, the end of the war did not resolve all the issues behind the conflict. Similarly, Mahinda Rajapaksa’s electoral loss in 2015 did not automatically end the structural and social violence that his authoritarian policies engendered. While the presidential election was a major change for politics island-wide, the parliamentary elections in 2015 may have presented a bigger change for the up-country. For the first time in Sri Lankan history, the CWC was no longer the largest Upcountry Tamil political party in parliament. This change was made possible due to the formation of the Tamil Progressive Alliance (TPA), which united the second, third and fourth largest Upcountry Tamil political parties: the Up-Country People’s Front, the National Union of Workers, and the Democratic People’s Front. This alliance is novel for several reasons, not only in that it secured eight seats in Nuwara Eliya, Badulla, Colombo and Kandy districts on the United National Front ticket, in comparison to the two seats that the CWC garnered solely in Nuwara Eliya district. This is the first time that Up-country Tamil political parties have formed a successful electoral alliance, without the participation of the CWC, which tended to bully and overwhelm smaller parties when it was a partner in such initiatives in the past. Additionally, the name of the group does not indicate any regional identification, as seen in the Up-country People’s Front, or a link to a trade union past, as with the National Union of Workers. This is a major shift, moving beyond the regional and union-based politics of the past, connecting Up-country Tamils as an ethnic 18