Abstract
Sri Lanka Journal of Social Sciences (SLJSS) publishes social science articles on topics relevant to Sri Lanka in particular and South Asia in general. The journal also has a website at http://www.nsf.gov.lk/.
Highlights
Social status is one of the key concepts in Sociology
In the 1980s, a group of the estate workers who lived in line rooms of Red Hill estate in Nuwara Eliya got half an acre plots of land and moved into a new settlement named Ganga Nagar established under the self-help housing project of the government
According to the study, housing schemes have played a significant role in creating a new social status for the migrated Indian Origin Tamils and integrating them with the larger Sri Lankan society
Summary
Social status is one of the key concepts in Sociology. Dignity is one aspect of a person’s social status. This paper discusses the concept of social status with reference to the Tamils of Indian origin who live in plantations in Sri Lanka. A middleaged man described, in rather poetic terms, “children without mothers”, which was an obvious allusion to the predicament of the Indian Origin Tamils (IOT) as people without their own space (motherland, social space). He went on to explain that the thottam (estate) had become their mother. The social status of the Estate Origin Tamils was based on a living pattern that was centred around the estate “line rooms” They were unable to share a privileged status in the society comparable to that of “the dominant groups”. The Sinhalese villagers labelled them using derogatory terminology such as demalu (Tamils), wathu demalu (Plantation Tamils), June/Dec 2008/2009
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