Sri Lanka's Tamil-Sinhalese Ethnic Conflict: Alternative Solutions

Abstract

Warfare between the Tamils and the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka has been going on, with varying degrees of intensity, since the late 1970s. Thousands of young fighters on both sides have been killed, as well as tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The ethnic conflict, while centuries old, has not always been violent. Depending on one's political predilection, the Tamil-Sinhalese conflict can be dated from the first South Indian invasions a thousand years ago, or one can move into recent times and point to the situation at independence from Britain in 1948. When the Portuguese arrived in Sri Lanka in 1505, they found separate Tamil kingdoms in the northern and eastern parts of the island and separate Sinhalese kingdoms in the south and in the Kandyan hills. Thus, it is difficult to argue that Sri Lanka is not now home to the Tamils as well as to the majority Sinhalese. By the time of independence, the Tamils held positions in the upper civil service and the professions far in excess of their proportion in the population. Again, depending on viewpoint, the Tamil position then could be explained as the consequence of British colonial efforts to divide and rule, or it could be because nothing much grows in the northern area and ambitious Tamils took to education and the jobs in the colonial system that could be had by those who were educated in English. So while it is true that the Tamils were very much over-represented in the most sought-after jobs at the time of independence, it is also true that Prime Minister S. W. R. D.