Sri Lankan Tamil Research Articles

Protests as Sites of Learning: A Case Study of the Sri Lankan Tamil and Anishinaabe Demonstrations in Canada

Social movements, in Canada and around the world, offer a rich window to study social actors as they struggle for power and justice. Relatively less explored in the academic literature is the role of social movements as a site of learning. In this article, the authors synthesize several theoretical frameworks for social movement learning and apply them to extensive fieldwork, in 2009, during Sri Lankan Tamil protests in Toronto and during Indigenous land and water defence in Beausoleil First Nation. They argue that such movements can serve as a powerful educational environment and explore how learning takes place by understanding the sources and sharing of knowledge, how the social identities of participants are consequential for learning, and the underlying social, economic, and political forces that shape movements and their emergence. Ultimately, the authors claim that understanding the learning that takes place in social movements in Canada helps us understand broader political struggles and discourse in the Canadian context and beyond, including critical new forms of solidarity.

Spilling the Tea: Aunty Discipline and the Queer Diasporic Child in D’Lo’s To T, or Not To T?

This article examines To T, or Not To T?, a solo play by D’Lo, a queer transmasculine Sri Lankan Tamil American performance artist and comedian. Considering the Super Aunty character, I examine how aunties orient diasporic life towards multiple modes of belonging and exclusion. Specifically, I explore how Aunty Discipline directed toward the queer diasporic child is vital in creating future hetero-reproductive diasporic subjects, then consider the intimacies of fictive kinship through the term ‘fam’. The queer diasporic body is a text on which others enact diasporic meanings, but D’Lo uses that very queer body to actively reimagine and re-image family and community, thereby infusing these spaces with his own queer ontologies and epistemologies.

The Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora and its Transnational Networks Post 9/11: Challenges and Opportunities for Canadian Policy

The Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora and its Transnational Networks Post 9/11: Challenges and Opportunities for Canadian Policy

Numerological Study Proposing New Names for Sri Lanka and Rupees for Better Prosperity

Our country got many setbacks after it changed the name from Ceylon to Sri Lanka. In the Ceylon days we were one of the best countries of Asia. Even Singapore wants to be similar to our country. However, after the name was changed to Sri Lanka Tamil Elam war and Economic problems started in the country and it became one of the worst countries in Asia. In this paper authors tried to search that whether there was any impact on the name change to the existing prosperity of the country based on accepted numerological principles. Also, it was tried to study the possibility of a new name be applied to solve the country’s ongoing economic crisis and other related issues. A new name was proposed based on the numerology and a program was operated in an infinite loop of computer. Results were obtained by analyzing the media news on economic progress of the country. Numerology is a subjective system that can show us another level of interpretation in the matters of life. New names were made according to Chaldean Numerology and the results were analyzed the after.

Investigating corroboration of self-perceived posttraumatic growth among Sri Lankan Tamil survivors of ethnopolitical warfare through trait, domain, and profile agreement approaches.

Though research on assessing posttraumatic growth has been severely critiqued, some evidence suggests close others can observe and report changes in individuals following traumatic life events and are sensitive to idiosyncratic ways in which changes manifest. We extended these findings by investigating corroboration of self-perceived posttraumatic growth (PTG) and depreciation (PTD) as measured by the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory-42 (PTGI-42) among Sri Lankan Tamil war survivors (n = 200). Informants slightly corroborated overall levels of PTG and PTD, while a more nuanced profile analysis procedure revealed overall-but not distinctive-profile agreement. This suggests self-other agreement is modest and may partly reflect shared narratives and collective cultural understandings about how people change after trauma. Results demonstrate further that informants were not sensitive to idiosyncratic ways in which target individuals had changed. Together, the lack of validity evidence suggests that the PTGI-42 may be inadequate in some cross-cultural contexts as a measure of nuanced posttraumatic change (i.e., as a measure of specific changes in the five theorized domains of growth and depreciation). Future work should emphasize culture- and context-sensitive measurement of posttraumatic change, particularly focusing on methods other than retrospective self-reports, such as prospective longitudinal designs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The mitochondrial genomes of two Pre-historic Hunter Gatherers in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka is an island in the Indian Ocean connected by the sea routes of the Western and Eastern worlds. Although settlements of anatomically modern humans date back to 48,000 years, to date there is no genetic information on pre-historic individuals in Sri Lanka. We report here the first complete mitochondrial sequences for Mesolithic hunter-gatherers from two cave sites. The mitochondrial haplogroups of pre-historic individuals were M18a and M35a. Pre-historic mitochondrial lineage M18a was found at a low prevalence among Sinhalese, Sri Lankan Tamils, and Sri Lankan Indian Tamil in the Sri Lankan population, whereas M35a lineage was observed across all Sri Lankan populations with a comparatively higher frequency among the Sinhalese. Both haplogroups are Indian derived and observed in the South Asian region and rarely outside the region.

Proverbs and Gender: The Interface between Proverbs and Human Relations in a Refugee Camp

The primary objective of this presentation is to understand how proverbs reflect society's perception of gender in a particular socio-cultural context. This qualitative study recognizes the direct experiences and insights of the 35 participants on gender relations. The proverbs provided by the participants led us to an in-depth analysis of the attitude of men toward women and their assumption of women’s role in a patriarchal society which could influence the gender relationship among Sri Lankan Tamils inside Indian refugee camps. A conceptual framework was developed to aid understanding of the research findings and illustrate the interrelationship between (a) refugee camps, (b) socio-cultural context, (c) patriarchal, and (d) collective identity. This framework provides an opportunity to position proverbs in a unique context. This study identified that the proverbs validate cultural expressions, justify rituals and gender practices, impose social pressure and social control on women, and reinforce society’s moral principles and values.

A contextual understanding of diaspora entrepreneurship: identity, opportunity and resources in the Sri Lankan Tamil and Kurdish diasporas

PurposeWithin the growing study of transnational entrepreneurial practice, existing conceptualisation of diaspora entrepreneurship has often lacked engagement with the particularities of the diaspora condition. This paper seeks to advance theoretical understanding and empirical study of diaspora entrepreneurship through identifying the processes that generate diaspora entrepreneurship across economic, social and political spheres.Design/methodology/approachTo analyse the relationship between the development of venture activity and diaspora (re)production, in depth, qualitative biographical analysis was undertaken with UK-based diaspora entrepreneurs embedded within the particular contexts of the Sri Lankan Tamil and Kurdish diasporas. Skilled and active diaspora entrepreneurs were purposively selected from these extreme case contexts to explore their entrepreneurial agency within and across the business, social and political realms.FindingsResults identified key dimensions shaping the development of diaspora entrepreneurship. These comprised the role of diaspora context in shaping opportunity frameworks and the mobilisation of available resources, and how venture activity served to sustain collective diaspora identity and address diaspora interests. These findings are used to produce an analytical model of the generation of diaspora entrepreneurship to serve as a basis for discussing how heterogeneous and hybrid entrepreneurial strategies emerge from and shape the evolving diaspora context.Originality/valueBy placing the reproduction of social collectivity centre-stage, this paper identifies the particularities of diaspora entrepreneurship as a form of transnational entrepreneurship. This recognizes the significance of a contextualised understanding of entrepreneurial diversity within wider processes of diaspora development, which has important implications for policy and practice development in homeland and settlement areas.

Displacement among Sri Lankan Tamil Migrants: The Diasporic Search for Home in the Aftermath of War. By Diotima Chattoraj

Displacement among Sri Lankan Tamil Migrants: The Diasporic Search for Home in the Aftermath of War. By Diotima Chattoraj

“This Group Is My Country”: Sri Lankan Tamil Women’s Narratives of Isolation and Connectedness in Australia

Refugees lose their networks and support systems on their journey from their home country. In addition, they may experience torture, trauma, and socio‐economic hardship. A critical question concerning refugee wellbeing is how refugee belonging, inclusivity, and community connectedness can be better understood, strengthened, and promoted. In this article, we discuss how members of the Tamil Seniors Group, supported by the NSW Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors (STARTTS), develop social networks in Australia. Based on two focus group discussions, this article analyses their experiences through the intersection of age and gender to elucidate the challenges and affordances of networking and establishing social relations in Australia.

Mahakavi Subramania Bharathiyar in Cultural Dimensions of Sri Lankan Tamils – A Study

Relations between Sri Lankan Tamils and Tamil Nadu are indigenous. They are multidimensional. They span politics, geography, history, commerce, literature, art, culture, religion, and worship. Due to the popularity of Tamil personalities, it is common for their names to influence the cultural spheres of Sri Lankan Tamils. It is common practise to put the names of active personalities on corporate organisations and projects. In such a background, this research is carried out by proposing the research problem that the name of Mahakavi Bharathiyar has influenced the cultural sites of Sri Lankan Tamils. Bharathiar belongs to the list of freedom fighters who fought for India till its independence. During the colonial period, Bharathiyar resistance was seen in two ways. One is a chant against the oppressive system of foreigners, and the other is a chant against the backward ideas found in society. Through his works, Bharathiyar is notable among those who brought both of these to the masses. It is worth noting here that it was Swami Vibulananda who introduced Bharathiyar and his works to Sri Lankan Tamils. As a result, it seems that a revolutionary movement about Bharathiyar has spread among the Sri Lankan Tamils. It caused great changes in the socio-cultural sphere. Thus, Bharathi's name has gained a stable place among Sri Lankan Tamils. Bharathiyar's name spans government schools, reading roads, social charities, women's liberation organizations, newspapers, magazines, sports clubs, street names, personal names, etc. Bharathiyar's creations have also been studied at the same time that lessons about Bharathiyar have been included in the art programmes of educational institutions such as government schools and universities. Memorial lectures, study conferences, etc. have also been started in honour of Bharathiyar. Statues of Bharathiyar have been installed and many memorials have appeared in all the places where Sri Lankan Tamils live today. It is noteworthy that these activities are a sign of the Bharathi Tamil historical period and his presence here is also evident from the study.

Dravidian Aesthetics - the foremost of Indian Aesthetics

The influences of contemporary events on the field of study and society on speakers of Dravidian languages such as Tamil indicate the primacy of Dravidian ideology. Scholars in other countries look at the functioning of the Dravidian movement in the political, social, and cultural spheres behind the Tamil aesthetics of Dravidian aesthetics being at the forefront of Indian aesthetics. The Czechoslovakian multi-linguist recalls in the interview the Sanskrit-Tamil linguistic exchanges, the unity, and other differences. The contribution of Dravidian culture to Indianization is revealed through the media interviews of Sri Lankan Tamil scholar Karthikesu Sivathambi. There is an explanation of the understanding of Tamil consciousness. Accordingly, the Dravidian movement developed by rejecting the Sanskrit tradition, the North Indian tradition, the Bhakti tradition, etc. Aside from religion, which is a feature of the past, the temple towers, the Nataraja image, the bhakti literature, etc., must be regarded as the active contribution of the Tamils, who were fully absorbed in Indian culture. These aspects were not adopted because of the atheistic, rationalist, and anti-Brahmin elements of the Dravidian movement. BC 100- AD 250 lays claim to Sangam literature, the Pre-Bhakti period literature. The central theme of the article was that the Dravidian movement regarded it as belonging to Tamils who did not have the Sanskrit tradition. It is understood that the contributions of Periyar and others led to the development of the Dravidian cultural ideology. Experts in other languages expound on Dravidian aesthetics. Malayalam scholar K. Ayyappa Panicker praises the Thinai doctrine of Tamil as a rare wealth of knowledge not found in the languages of the world. Not all Sanskrit language texts are based on the orthodox tradition they also include books.

Pandit K. Veerakatthi’s Vision on Diversity - A Study

The Tamil grammar books published from Tolkappiyam onwards have explained the importance of diversity. Following this, many studies have been published on the system of differentiation in Tamil, its number, parameters, and objects. The changes that have taken place in the Tamil language from time to time have had their influence on grammatical rules and grammatical usage. This can also be seen in differential grammar. In this context, the views and studies presented by Pandit K.Veerakathi, a Tamil researcher from Jaffna, are noteworthy. Especially in the book "Grammatic Explanation' written by him, one can observe a new approach and trend towards diversity. He has explained the difference with appropriate evidence from the way of the Tholkaapiyar and spoken dialect. In addition to emphasising that diversity is the word phrase, or grammar that is about the structure of language, the structure of diversity accepts the uniqueness of diversity. He also mentions that the differentiated parameter consists of three elements: the term that completes the differentiation. He has explained the differences starting from the first difference to the seventh difference, respectively, as the series of nominatives, the series of intransitive active sequence, the series of causal succession sequence, the series of acceptance, the series of comparative elimination, the series of possessive cases, and the series of evidence. While revealing the new trends with suitable examples, he also established that some of the distinctive characters and objects mentioned by Tolkappyar still persist in the dialect. He has given examples, especially from the colloquial language spoken in Sri Lanka. Through these, we can know that there are archaic cases in Sri Lankan Tamil. His ideas on variation introduced a new trend in the world of grammar: It has paved the way for further discussions and research: It has affirmed the Sri Lankan Tamil scholar's role in grammar.

The names of the leader: the political deification of prabhakaran

ABSTRACT This essay investigates the deification of Prabhakaran, the leader of the Sri Lankan Tamil insurrectionary group, the LTTE. I describe the centrality of death in the ideological economy of the LTTE, with the leader Prabhakaran as the love-object who consecrated and directed such death. Following Ernesto Laclau, I propose that a chain of equivalences is forged in LTTE ideology: to get to Tamil Eelam is to love Prabhakaran. While Tamil militancy’s common solution to the Tamil community’s malaise and suffering under state discrimination and violence was a self-described Tamil homeland, a ‘Tamil Eelam’, the LTTE came to actively create a set of equivalences that centered Prabhakaran as the name of the fullness of that community. This chain of meanings created a path dependency between Tamil Eelam and Prabhakaran, the former actualizable only through the latter. Thus, contemporary Tamil nationalism still labors under the Prabhakaran problem, even after his killing.

Rohini Mohan's The Seasons of Trouble (2014): Sri Lanka's Tamil women in war and its aftermath

ABSTRACT The protracted armed conflict in Sri Lanka (1983–2009) has had a significant impact on the social fabric of the country. The Tamil community – the women especially – bore the brunt of the traumatic spill-over of decades of warfare that brutalised all areas of life, especially in the North. With the belief that narrative literature on war captures the complex ways in which gender, war, and peace interact and impact configurations of the female gender in turbulent war-torn and post-war societies, this paper critically reads Rohini Mohan's The Seasons of Trouble (2014), a non-fiction narrative of the life stories of three individuals that lay claim to ‘truth’ and therefore is placed in a strong position in relation to collective memory, archive, and history. The critical content analysis from a feminist theoretical standpoint conveys how the trajectories of Tamil women caught in Sri Lanka's war shine a light on the ways in which dominant configurations of war and peace construct the female gender identity in specific ways and thereby shape the way women are framed in war-torn and post-war societies with tangible implications on the lived realities of Tamil women in Sri Lanka.

‘Once Upon a Time in the Land of Grave-Holes’: Cheran’s Poetry in Sri Lanka

My essay looks at the Sri Lankan-born Tamil poet Cheran Rudhramoorthy’s recent poetry collections, Ajnar (‘Trauma’, 2018) and Tinai Mayakkam allathu Nenjodu Killarthal (‘Binary Overlapping or Struggles with the Heart’, 2019). Published almost a decade after the final war—the massacre of Sri Lankan Tamils by the state’s armed forces at Mullivaikal on 18 May 2009—these poems provide a searing counter-narrative to the official justifications. The finality of what took place at Mullivaikal, when what seemed like all the powers of the world had conspired to draw the 30-year Tamil militancy to an end, has provided Sri Lankan Tamils with a historical moment tied to a specific locus.2 The Ajnar and Tinai Mayakkam poems present Cheran as a poet for the dispossessed. These poems with their split movements between the homeland and new snowscapes erase the borders between the refuges of the diaspora and a lost island. Cheran’s poems and other writings—on grief, love, land and exile—are made amid unimaginable state-sponsored violence against minority bodies. In this essay, I provide a historico-cultural background in terms of the various discourses that were coming into prominence in the 1960s and 1970s as Cheran came of age—for instance, the remnants of colonial racism that provided the impetus to a post-independence nationalism, a thriving literary caste-driven Saivism, and the manifestation of an authoritarian state apparatus and its militant opposition.

Gastro-testimonials in Handmade: Narrating the War Experiences of Sri Lankan Tamil Women through Food

This essay examines the silent traumas, gendered violence, and unacknowledged resilience embedded in women's war stories from Sri Lanka's civil war (1983–2009) in the cookbook Handmade. Handmade is not a conventional cookbook. It is a collection of culinary life narratives that emerge from the depths of war to provide insider perspectives on the impact of war on the lives of women. I discuss the trajectory of the civil war and its postwar phases through the gastro-testimonials of Sri Lanka's Tamil women in the war-devastated regions of the Jaffna peninsula and the Vanni. The majority of the women featured in the cookbook are war widows. These women become the authors of their own life narratives when they use culinary ingenuity as the language of self-expression to tell their stories of suffering and survival. I demonstrate how the women's stories uncover important life narratives through a culinary mapping of war as a feminist act to argue that the cookbook is not a cultural artifact or a compendium of recipes. It is a testimonial narrative that uncovers the fractured lives that reside within and behind each recipe. The language of food formalizes the survival narratives of resilient Tamil women as they transition from invisibility to public disclosure through their cooking "against war."

Exploring Autism, Culture, and Immigrant Experiences: Lessons from Sri Lankan Tamil Mothers.

Background: Canada is home to a mosaic of cultures with immigrant communities from a wide range of countries, but there are significant variations in how autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may be understood across different immigrant groups, including Sri Lankan Tamils. Such gaps in knowledge may present challenges for immigrant families that are trying to access appropriate care for their child, including occupational therapy services. Purpose: This descriptive qualitative study aimed to better understand the experiences of immigrant Sri Lankan Tamil parents of children diagnosed with ASD in Southern Ontario, Canada. Method: Interviews were analyzed using an in-depth content analysis. Findings: Results demonstrated parents’ perceived supports and barriers towards ASD intervention planning, and indicated that parents were generally satisfied by the level of cultural competence in current ASD systems. However, families may still experience significant immigrant-related barriers that are not fully addressed. Implications: Recommendations to improve cultural awareness among occupational therapists utilizing ASD interventions are suggested.

Rohingyas and Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in Tamil Nadu: a replicable model of semi-permanent resettlement in low-resource settings

PurposeAfter being forced to flee their respective home countries, Sri Lankan Tamils and Rohingya refugees resettled in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. This study attempts to explore the extent to which the state has provided means for integration in the absence of refugee protection laws and citizenship.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative research approach was used, including in-depth interviews (IDIs) and focus group discussions (FGDs) with participants from both refugee groups between 2019 and early 2020. A representative sample of male and female Sri Lankan Tamils, living in or outside government camps, in urban and rural areas, was included (total number = 75). Similarly, a representative sample of the Rohingya refugee community was included for this study (n = 44).FindingsDespite constraints imposed by inadequate infrastructure, the study finds that Sri Lankan Tamils and Rohingyas both show to be progressively integrated in local society and have been capable of fulfilling some important basic livelihood needs, especially with regards to education. Some areas for improvement are identified as well, most urgently in terms of health and accommodation.Practical implicationsOther states in India, as well as in similar low-income countries (LICs), could learn from the current case study with regards to administering workable policies for small groups of refugees.Originality/valueWith minimal state facilitation and within the context of limited legal backing, refugee groups have somewhat managed to re-built their lives. This study identifies the threshold of requirements that make this achievement possible and suggests what more could be done to further advance the current state.

Rebordering South Asia: Displaced Persons and Urbanization

This article analyzes displacement in the context of three communities in South Asia: Afghan refugees in Pakistan, Sri Lankan Tamils in India, and Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. In each of these cases, refugee management emerges out of the complexities of geopolitics and humanitarianism and becomes central to urban questions of the right to move and remain in the city. Drawing on scholarship in the geopolitics of migrant (im)mobilities, refugee studies, and South Asia studies, we argue that displacement threatens the contours of belonging and citizenship across South Asian nation-states. For these reasons, the cities where the displaced live have become the locus of national unbelonging and state violence through entangled forms of securitization and urbanization. In particular, we detail the spatial and socioeconomic segregation of displaced populations in which they are subject to mundane bureaucratic violence and the role that social class plays in navigating the exclusions triggered by displacement. In the cities where the displaced settle, the displaced shape the urban economy, whereas the state applies strategies of spatial control that aim to nationalize urban space while maintaining the refugees as forever displaceable.