Sri Lankan Tamil Research Articles

The claim to self-determination: a Sri Lankan Tamil perspective

Nationalism and self-determination have many definitions, varying from region to region, and evolving over time. Almost everywhere, the potency of these concepts has greatly increased in the course of the twentieth century. On the one hand, there is a regional or global dispersion of populations and virtually all states are becoming increasingly hetero-ethnic and hetero-national; on the other, the intensity of ethno-nationalism is also increasing and seems to be positively correlated to the degree of dispersion. In this paper, there is an attempt to formulate a definition of nationalism that is relevant to current realities, global and South Asian, and to trace the growth of Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism, virtually non-existent at the time of independence in 1948, in the context of the developments since then. The paper goes on to trace the gradual (and as yet partial) transformation of the Sri Lankan Tamils nationalist objective from internal to external self-determination, beginning in the mid-1970s. Despite the extended bloody civil war, this transformation is yet at an early stage, and it may still be possible to negotiate an end to the civil war on the basis of internal self-determination.

Sri Lanka's Prolonged Ethnic Conflict: Negotiating a Settlement

AbstractNegotiations to resolve Sri Lanka's prolonged and deep-rooted ethnic conflict have a long history. The negotiations fall into two categories: those conducted locally between parties to the dispute, and those negotiated with the presence and under the auspices of a regional power, India in this instance. There have been several sets of negotiations of the first category, none of them successful. The Indian mediation in Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict which began in the early 1980s and lasted eight years, provides a classic study in the perils involved when a regional power seeks to negotiate and impose a settlement in an ethnic conflict in a neighboring state. That coercive intervention, with its ambiguous and eventually contradictory objectives, failed in almost all of its aims. Entering the dispute as a mediator with the avowed objective of protecting the interests of Sri Lanka's Tamil minority, the Indian army eventually fought the principal representatives of Tamil separatism on Sri Lankan soil, a unique example of an external mediator's unintended transformation into a combatant. The failure of this enterprise aggravated the island's ethnic conflict, far from resolving it. It left successive Sri Lankan governments first negotiating with the most violent and intransigent of the Tamil separatist groups, and then continuing a military struggle once the negotiations failed. The Sri Lankan situation provides insights into the difficulties faced by democratically elected governments in dealing with a separatist movement captured by the most violent group within it, a group that has systematically marginalized its rivals and driven the traditional democratic forces among the Tamils to the periphery of the political system.The new Sri Lanka government elected in December 2001, like its immediate predecessor, is intent on negotiations with the Tamils with the assistance of a Norwegian facilitator. There is little reason to be optimistic about the outcome of such efforts given the dismal record of previous episodes of negotiation between the Sri Lankan government and the principal Tamil separatist group.

Mental health issues in Tamil refugees and displaced persons. Counselling implications

Fifty-one Sri Lankan Tamil refugees/displaced persons living in South India completed the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-58. In addition, in interviews they answered open-ended questions about personal loss, personal traumatic experiences, negative feelings, living in camps, and the availability of support. The health of the respondents was poor. Moreover, experiences such as watching the killing of family members and being wounded were mentioned as reasons to flee. Many respondents said they experienced negative feelings. Social support was reasonably available although family members were often not situated in the same camp.

Book reviews and notices : DAYA SOMASUNDARAM, Scarred minds: The psychological impact of war on Sri Lankan Tamils. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1998. 352 pp. Figures, tables, notes, references, appendices, index. Rs. 425 (hardback)

Book reviews and notices : DAYA SOMASUNDARAM, Scarred minds: The psychological impact of war on Sri Lankan Tamils. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1998. 352 pp. Figures, tables, notes, references, appendices, index. Rs. 425 (hardback)

Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism: Its Origins and Development in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism: Its Origins and Development in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Estate Tamils, the Ceylon citizenship act of 1948 and Sri Lankan politics

This article explores the contribution made by the conservative, illiberal orientation of Sri Lankan nationalist ideology towards the Estate Tamil population to the present ethnic conflict on the island. This orientation was made evident in the citizenship and franchise laws Sri Lanka passed soon after independence to exclude the plantation Tamil workers from the political nation. I argue that the actions of the Sinhalese elite led by D.S. Senanayake were loaded with an anti‐working class and ethnically divisive content that has been neglected in previous studies. The new laws distorted the pattern of political incentives, alignments and party competition in the emerging system, and systematically skewed it to favour the most traditional segment of the Sinhalese electorate. This created an intractable dynamic of ethnic outbidding between the two major Sinhalese‐dominated parties to attract the Sinhalese voting base, at the expense of the Sri Lankan Tamil minority. This directly contributed to the latter's alienation, support for secessionism, and the outbreak of ethnic violence and civil war in the 1970s and 1980s.

Siting Culture: The Shifting Anthropological Object.

Introduction Kirsten Hastrup and Karen Fog OlwigPart I: Finding a key debate place for cultureCultural Sites: Sustaining a home in a deteritorialized world Karen Fog Olwig Imaginging a place in the Andes: In the borderland of lived, invented and analyzed cultures Karsten Paerregaard Which world? On diffusion of Algerian Rai to the West March Schade-Poulsen Seeking place: Capsized identities and contracted belonging among Sri lankan Tamil refugees Ann-Belinda Steen PreisPart II: The Culture and Politics of PlaceThe nation as a human being: A metaphor in a mid-life crisis? Notes on the imminent collapse of Norwegian national identity Thomas Hylland Eriksen Paradoxes of sovereignty and independence: 'real' and 'pseudo' nation-states and depoliticization of poverty James Ferguson The experience of displacement: reconstructing places and identities in Sri Lanka Brigitte Refslund Sorensen Localizing the American Dream: constructing Hawaiian homelands Ulla Hasager Picturing and placing Constable country Judith OkelyPart III: Topical Metaphors in Anthropological ThinkingSpeechless emissaries: refugees, humanitarianism and dehistoricization Liisa H. Malkki 'Roots' and 'Mosaic' in a Balkan border village: locating cultural production Jonathan Schwartz Simplifying Complexity: assimilating the global in a small paradise Jonathan Friedman There are no Indians in the Dominican Republic: the cultural construction of Dominican identities

Craniofacial anthropometry of Sri Lankans

The data available on craniofacial anthropometry of Sri Lankans are very scanty. These measurements are an important consideration to the clinician and the anthropologist. A total of 8409 children, 3954 males and 4450 females in the age range of 6-18 years, belonging to the three major ethnic groups in Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese, Sri Lankan Tamils and Sri Lankan Moors were examined with the aim of establishing the normal values for a series of seven craniofacial measurements obtained using Holtain anthropometric instruments. Norms were established for 1-year age categories from 6-18 years, for males and females in the three ethnic groups'. The Sinhalese males and females showed higher values for head circumference, head breadth and bicondylar breadth than the Sri Lankan Tamils and Moors, differences which were statistically significant (P<0.05 to P<0.001). The facial height of the Sri Lankan Moors were significantly greater that of the Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamils.

Sri Lanka's Structural Adjustment Program and Its Impact on Indo-Lanka Relations

Sri Lanka celebrates 50 years of independence in 1998 with the majority Sinhalese engaged in a protracted conflict with minority Tamil1 rebels determined to create a separate state. Given that the nearly 60 million Tamils in India's Tamil Nadu state act as a sociocultural bastion for Sri Lanka's Tamils, an analysis of Indo-Lanka relations inevitably regards the ongoing ethnic conflict, the 1983 anti-Tamil riots, Tamil sentiment in Tamil Nadu, and the Sri Lankan Tamil rebels as significant variables. That acknowledged, this article considers Sri Lanka's post-1977 structural adjustment policies as an independent variable to analyze Indo-Lanka relations in the 1977-87 decade. India's and Sri Lanka's foreign policy decisions are made in reaction to international systemic influences, the geostrategic environment in South Asia, the respective leaders' personalities and their parties' ideological proclivities, and both states' multiethnic and multireligious character. The article attempts to take all this into consideration in analyzing the impact of structural adjustment reforms on Indo-Lanka relations.

Sri Lankan Tamil Refugee Women in India

The author describes the situation of displaced and refugee Sri Lankan Tamil women in camps in India. Gender, ethnicity, class status, religion, social roles and security of the person are central to this analysis of women's experiences of war as contrasted with the situation of men. The significance of clashing cultures and divergent social norms to the everyday lives of these women is highlighted. The plight of these women is linked to refugee policy and international conventions that are not salient to the actual lived experience in the camps, and some directions for change are indicated.

Nostalgia, Desire, Diaspora: South Asian Sexualities in Motion

In Funny Boy, Sri Lankan-Canadian writer Shyam Selvadurai’s 1994 novel in six stories, the upper-middle class Sri Lankan Tamil narrator traces the seven years of his childhood and adolescence that preceded the Tamil-Sinhalese riots in 1983, and his family’s subsequent migration to Canada. Given the illegibility and unrepresentability of a non-heteronormative (female) subject within patriarchal and heterosexual configurations of both nation and diaspora, the project of locating a 'queer South Asian diasporic subject' - and a queer female subject in particular - may begin to challenge the dominance of such configurations. The slide from female homosociality into female homoeroticism in this scene, as well as in another where Radha rubs oil into Sita's hair, serves to locate female same-sex desire and pleasure firmly within the confines of the home and 'the domestic', rather than as that which safely occurs 'elsewhere'.

Regional Powers and Small State Security: India and Sri Lanka, 1977–90. By K. M. de Silva. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1995. xvii, 388 pp. $48.50 (cloth).

Regional Powers and Small State Security recounts India's involvement in the affairs of its much smaller neighbour, Sri Lanka, over the question of Tamil separatists in the northern and eastern parts of the island. K. M. de Silva first examines Indian regional ambitions and Indian-Sri Lankan relations during the cold war. He explores the origins of ethnic strife in Sri Lanka and the interests of lndia, with its own large Tamil population, in that strife. He then tells the story of lndia's involvement in three stages. From about 1980, India provided covert support for Sri Lanka's Tamil separatists operating from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. From 1983 to 1987, India attempted to serve as mediator between the separatists and the Sri Lankan government. From 1987 to 1990, India was a combatant against the separatists in Sri Lanka. The author has had special access to confidential Sri Lankan official sources. On the basis of those documents, he further interviewed all politicians and senior officials involved in negotiations on both the Indian and the Sri Lankan side. This book significantly broadens the base of information available for students of South Asia and of ethnic conflict.

Sri Lanka: Surviving Ethnic Strife

Sri Lanka: Surviving Ethnic Strife K.M. de Silva (bio) When Sri Lanka—or Ceylon, as it was then called—gained its independence from Britain in 1947–48, it was hailed as the “model colony” that had negotiated a peaceful passage out of colonial rule in a region still suffering from the shock of the bloody partition of India and Pakistan and the civil war in Burma. Today, this 66,000-square-kilometer island just 40 miles off the southeastern tip of the Indian subcontinent is better known for the destructive effects of prolonged ethnic conflict, though it remains a functioning democracy and one of the few postcolonial states with an unbroken record of democratic rule. The island has three distinct “ethnic” groups, the Sinhalese, Tamils, and Muslims, and adherents of three of the world’s other major religions besides Islam, namely Theravada Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity. The Sinhalese, who make up almost three-quarters of the total population of about 18 million, are concentrated in the southern, western, and central parts of the island. Most Sinhalese are Buddhists; all told, these account for two-thirds of the total population. There are two distinct Tamil groups, the Sri Lanka Tamils (12 percent) and the Indian Tamils (5 percent). The latter are descended mainly from plantation workers whom the British brought to the island in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and who now live mostly in the central hills. About two-thirds of the Sri Lanka Tamils live in the drier northern and eastern parts of the island, with the rest residing in the predominantly Sinhalese-populated areas. Despite being in the majority on the island itself, the Sinhalese are all too conscious of being a minority vis-à-vis the Tamils of southern [End Page 97] India and Sri Lanka taken together. The Indian state of Tamil Nadu, located across the Palk Strait from Sri Lanka, is an important center of Tamil separatist sentiment within India. Although Sri Lanka’s Muslims are mostly Tamil-speaking, they regard themselves as distinct by virtue of their religion. The division between the two groups is seen at its sharpest in the eastern part of the island, where more than 30 percent of the Muslims are concentrated. The pattern of population distribution has had profound consequences. While the fate of parties at general elections is determined largely in the Sinhalese areas, the Tamils have contributed to their own discomfiture by adhering to regionally based ethnic parties since independence. The Muslims largely avoided this mistake, at least until the late 1980s. While the virulence of ethnic conflict in recent years is of course an essential part of the story, Sri Lanka also provides a superb example of how democracy can survive under almost impossible conditions, including intervention by its giant neighbor to the north. 1 After covertly supporting Tamil separatists for a time, India in 1987 sent in the so-called Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to mediate the conflict. The IPKF remained in the north and east of the island for a little over two and a half years. 2 Its presence provoked a massive backlash of Sinhalese-nationalist sentiment and the second phase in the violent career of the ultraleftist People’s Liberation Front (JVP), whose combination of Marxism and Sinhalese nationalism and penchant for violence bring to mind Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge and Peru’s Shining Path. 3 On the Tamil-separatist side were the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), just as fanatically committed to a particular authoritarian agenda as the JVP and just as strongly nationalist. The Tamil Tigers’ compulsive resort to terror has earned them, too, a justifiable comparison to the Khmer Rouge. Faced with these twin threats, the Sri Lankan government had no choice but to resist or succumb. Eventually, it defeated the JVP. The LTTE has presented a more difficult challenge. Kept at bay from the mid-1980s on, in late 1995 and early 1996 the LTTE saw its main stronghold at the island’s northern tip fall to the Sri Lankan army. But that is not and will not be the end of the story. The loss of life in these conflicts has been extraordinarily high...

Sri Lanka's Ethnic Conflict: Have Bombs Shattered Hopes for Peace?

Research Article| November 01 1996 Sri Lanka's Ethnic Conflict: Have Bombs Shattered Hopes for Peace? Marshall R. Singer Marshall R. Singer Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Asian Survey (1996) 36 (11): 1146–1155. https://doi.org/10.2307/2645640 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Marshall R. Singer; Sri Lanka's Ethnic Conflict: Have Bombs Shattered Hopes for Peace?. Asian Survey 1 November 1996; 36 (11): 1146–1155. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2645640 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAsian Survey Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1996 The Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Book Reviews : S. J. V. Chelvanayakam and the Crisis of Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, 1947-1977. A Political Biography by A. Jeyaratnam Wilson. London: C. Hurst and Co. Pp. xii, 149

Book Reviews : S. J. V. Chelvanayakam and the Crisis of Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, 1947-1977. A Political Biography by A. Jeyaratnam Wilson. London: C. Hurst and Co. Pp. xii, 149

Sri Lanka in 1995: A Difficult and Disappointing Year

Another difficult year has ended in Sri Lanka's troubled history, a disappointing one for those who had guardedly hoped that President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga's new People's Alliance (PA) government would be able to make substantial progress toward bringing about a peaceful resolution of the country's chronic ethnic conflict. The stage for the dramatic events of 1995 was set in the last half of 1994 when Kumaratunga led the Alliance to a narrow victory in the August parliamentary election and three months later greatly strengthened her position by winning the presidential race by an unprecedented margin. In between the two contests, she had as prime minister taken major steps to break the long stalemate on the ethnic issue, relaxing the embargo on the shipment of essential goods to areas in the North controlled by the insurgent Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and sending a delegation to Jaffna to hold exploratory talks with senior Tiger leaders. These initiatives had strengthened her claim in the presidential election to be the candidate of peace and ethnic harmony, and helped win her strong support from war-weary Sinhalese as well as from Sri Lankan Tamil voters.

S. J. V. Chelvanayakam and the Crisis of Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, 1947-1977: A Political Biography.

S.J. Chelvanayakam was one of the most prominent leaders of the Ceylon Tamils before and after the end of colonial rule, and in the early days of their struggle for political and economic equality. The author, who knew Chelvanayakam intimately, analyzes in this work his career and his symbiotic relationship with the Ceylon Tamils, which led eventually to the emergence and reinforcing of a defensive Ceylon Tamil nationalism. The work is based on personal papers, interviews with leading protagonists, parliamentary records and the English and Tamil press. It is also conceived by the author as a model for the study of ethno-nationalism, the politics of Gandhian protest and of crisis leadership in a multi-ethnic Third World state.

The Sri Lankan Tamils: Ethnicity and Identity

Introduction - the origins of the dispute, Chelvadurai Manogaran and Bryan Pfaffenberger Tamils and the meaning of history, Dagmar Hellmann-Rajanayagam Sri Lanka Tamils under colonial rule, Sinappah Arasaratnam colonization as politics - the political use of space in Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict, C. Manogaran the Colombo man, the Jaffna man and the Batticaloa man - regional identities and the rise of the Federal Party, Jayaratnam A. Wilson the political construction of defensive nationalism - the 1968 temple-entry crisis in Sri Lanka, B. Pfaffenberger the groups and the rise of militant secessionism, D. Hellmann-Rajanayagam the material basis for separatism - the Tamil Eelam movement in Sri Lanka, Amita Shastri afterword - the future of Sinhalese-Tamil relations in Sri Lanka, J.A. Wilson and C. Manogaran.

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this article:George L. Mosse, Confronting the Nation: Jewish and Western Nationalism.Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity.John Hutchinson, Modern Nationalism.Mathew Horsman and Andrew Marshall, After the Nation‐State. Citizens, Tribalism and the New World Disorder.Ted Robert Gurr and Barbara Harff, Ethnic Conflict In World Politics.A. Jeyaratnam Wilson, S. J. V. Chelvanayakam and the Crisis of Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, 1947–1977.Roger Michener (ed.), Nationality, Patriotism and Nationalism in Liberal Democratic Societies.Ian M. Cuthbertson and Jane Leibowitz (eds.), Minorities: The New Europe's Old Issue.Pascalis M. Kitromilides, The Enlightenment as Social Criticism. Iossiopos Moisiodax and Greek Culture in the Eighteenth Century.Michael A. Osborne, Nature, the Exotic, and the Science of French Colonialism.

Book reviews

Election ‘94 South Africa: The Campaigns, Results and Future Prospects edited by Andrew Reynolds (London: James Currey; Cape Town: David Philip; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994, pp.xvii+237, £9.95 pb). Ghana in Search of Stability, 1957–1992 by Youry Petchenkine (Westport, CN: Praeger, 1993, £44.95 hb). African Perspectives on Development: Controversies, Dilemmas and Openings edited by Ulf Himmelstrand, Kabiru Kinyanjui and Edward Mburugu (London: James Currey Ltd, 1994, pp.342, £35 hb, £12.95 pb). The Southern African Environment: Profiles of the SADC Countries edited by Sam Moyo, Phil O'Keefe and Michael Sill (London: Earthscan, 1993, pp.xiv+354, £35). Negotiating Structural Adjustment in Africa edited by Willem van der Geest (London: United Nations Development Programme in association with James Currey, 1994, pp.ix+230, £35 hb, £14.95 pb). Restructuring South Africa edited by John D. Brewer (New York: St. Martin's Press; Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994, pp.154, £35). Alan Paton: A Biography by Peter F. Alexander (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, pp.xiv+500 and index, £25). An Anatomy of Public Policy Implementation. The Case of Decentralization Policies in Ghana by Joseph R.A. Ayee (Aldershot and Brookfield: Avebury, 1994, pp.xii+244, £37.50). Going for Gold: Men, Mines, and Migration by T. Dunbar Moodie with Vivienne Ndatshe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994, pp.xi+337 = 348/10/b/w illustrations, 4 maps, 2 figures, $45 hb, $16 pb). Making War and Waging Peace: Foreign Intervention in Africa edited by David R. Smock (Washington: US Institute of Peace, 1993). Contemporary African Politics and Development: A Comprehensive Bibliography 1981–1990 edited by Vijitha Mahadevan (Boulder and London: Lynne Reinner, 1995, pp.1314, £128). Contesting Colonial Hegemony. State and Society in Africa and India edited by Dagmar Engels and Shula Marks (London and New York: The German Historical Institute and British Academic Press, 1994, pp.viii+349, £39.50 hb). S.J.V. Chelvanayakam and the Crisis of Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, 1947–1977 by A. Jeyaratnam Wilson (London: C. Hurst & Co., 1994, pp.ix+149, £22.50). State Elections in India. Data Handbook on Vidhan Sabha Elections 1952–85, Volume 2: The West ‐Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Goa, Daman & Diu edited by V.B. Singh and Shankar Bose (New Delhi; Newbury Park, London: Sage Publications, 1987, £65). Development Policy of a Communist Government ‐ West Bengal since 1977 by Ross Mallick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge South Asian Studies 54), 1993). Nehru to the Nineties: The Changing Office of Prime Minister in India edited by James Manor (London: Hurst & Co.: 1994, £12.95 pb, £37.50 hb). Communism in Punjab (A Study of the Movement up to 1967) by Gurharpal Singh (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1994, pp.355, price not indicated). The Fall of Hong Kong, China's Triumph and Britain's Betrayal by Mark Roberti (New York: John Wiley, 1994, pp.xvi+336, £16.95). Australia (2nd edn). World Bibliographical Series, Vol. 46 compiled by I. Kepars (Oxford: Clio Press Oxford, 1994, pp.xx+284, £42). Australia's First Fabians: Middle Class Radicals, Labour Activists and the Early Labour Movement by Race Mathews, with foreword by Gough Whitlam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp.xii+284, £35). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Australia edited by Susan Bambrick (Cambridge, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp.ix+384, illus., £40). Transforming Labor: Labor Tradition and the Labor Decade in Australia by Peter Beilharz (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp.xv+245, £35). Democracy, Clientelism, and Civil Society edited by Luis Roniger and Ayse Günes‐Ayata (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1994, pp.viii+223, $40 hb). Religion in Third World Politics by Jeff Haynes (Buckingham and Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1993, pp.166, £37.50 hb, £12.99 pb). Third World Politics: A Comparative Introduction by Paul Cammack, David Pool and William Tordoff (London: Macmillan, 1993, pp.xii+351, £11.99, pb).