BlowbackIn the mid 1950s, Sri Lankas majority Sinhalese politicians began outbidding one another on who could provide the greatest advantages for their community, using the Sinhala language as their instrument. The appeal to Sinhalese linguistic nationalism precipitated a situation in which the movement to replace English as the countrys official language with Sinhala and Tamil (the language of Sri Lankas principal minority) was abandoned and Sinhala alone