Ask the majority of the so-called Tamil leaders and they will claim that the Tamils have problems. They will quote problems that are not exclusive to them and examples that do not even exist. Ask them to name present problems exclusive to Tamils, and they will get stuck. Therefore, everyone asking the problem is careful not to put them on the spot, while they make sure that no one dares ask them what they cannot answer. Put the same question to Tamil Nadu, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) diaspora, the foreigners supporting the LTTE diaspora including foreign Parliamentarians or even India, and they too would wriggle out with some irrelevant “koheda yanne, malle pol” (folk Sinhalese way of referring to a non sequitur) answer. 

Such is the situation that Sri Lanka is faced with. No wonder we are running around the mulberry bush, trying to find solutions to problems that do not exist or solutions to problems that are not exclusive to Tamils. 

Claims of a homeland

What Tamil politicians initially and terrorists thereafter are claiming is a piece of land that was demarcated by colonial Britain in 1833. However, the latter pertains to a period of rule that is centuries old and of areas that had been under the rule of others before them and also thereafter. If someone is claiming a homeland from a period during an X century, and if that area had been ruled for centuries thereafter by others and even before that by others, how valid is this claim, when for centuries, different communities had been living in this area and continue to do so, while following South Indian invasions and European invasions, people had been imported and settled in these areas too. This is like a used doll given to a child and then held by other children over the years. Can the child claim the used doll as only hers? 

Given that we accept the out-of-Africa theory, with man drifting to different corners where depending on the location and environment, their traits, habits and physique changed and they began evolving into different ethnic groups based on the language that they spoke, etc., the question arises as to where did Tamils evolved from originally – is it in Tamil Nadu or Sri Lanka. With 72 million Tamils already living in Tamil Nadu, it is without a doubt that Tamils evolved in Tamil Nadu as evidence from colonial records shows that all three colonial invaders transported large numbers of Tamils from South India to Sri Lanka to work as coolies and indentured labour.

Did the ethnic group known as Tamils evolve, emerge, and spread from Tamil Nadu or Sri Lanka?

Discrimination and aspirations

Discrimination has a history and began with colonial rule where the divide and conquer policy meant segregating people as blacks, browns, and whites, separating people according to ethnicities and religion and dividing people as minorities and the majority. The psyche of division was embedded into the minds of the people by the colonials. The most horrendous discrimination, human rights violations, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide were committed by colonials and modern-day crimes cannot match what colonials did over the span of 500 years. Ironically, these perpetrators present themselves as beacons of virtue and upholders of human rights without atoning for their crimes upon millions of people across all nations around the globe. 

The colonials gave minorities education and position while depriving the same from the majority. They found it easier to rule by controlling smaller groups. This was discrimination but it was acceptable to the minorities, and post-Independence, the minorities deemed it their right to rule over the majority. To continue the divide and to benefit from the division, colonials who had given privileges to minorities turned the tables to hand power over to the majority, so that they could pretend to be safeguarding the minorities and continue to interfere in nations using minorities to back them. Did the minorities not want to take over from the colonials to rule over the majority? Was this not discriminating against the majority?

There is frequent reference to Tamil aspirations. Is a Government bound to only deliver to the aspirations of one community, disregarding the aspirations of other communities, and that too, only the aspirations of one group, within one community? The supposed aspiration for a Tamil Eelam is to satisfy just a handful of Tamils while the rest are happy to live with the other communities. How many Tamils are going to live in the supposed Tamil Eelam, how many Tamils are living outside this Tamil Eelam, and how many who do not even live in Sri Lanka are asking for Tamil Eelam? By now, you should be able to realise that this whole issue has nothing to do with discrimination or aspirations.

The language issue, the Social Disabilities Act, standardisation, and riots

Was Tamil an official language before 1505 or after 1505 to claim this grievance? Why did Tamils not object when English was used as the official language and not Tamil? Is their animosity only with the Sinhala language? During colonial rule, the best of education and automatically, the best of jobs went to the minorities and the Sinhalese who converted to Christianity and studied in English. This group constituted the elite and they were very happy to enjoy privileges knowing the suffering of the rest of the masses. Only this elite gained admission to universities, obtained scholarships, and enjoyed the best of jobs. 

Two incidents shook those enjoying unfair privileges. The first was the Prevention of Social Disabilities Act, No. 21 of 1957 which allowed low-caste Tamils to gain school education and enter kovils that were initially denied to them. This resulted in an uproar by high-caste Tamils against their own. So much for wanting to have a separate State of their own. The second was the standardisation in university admissions which allowed the non-elite amongst Tamils and the Sinhalese to enter universities and gain higher education. This narrative is also being unfairly promoted by many who belonged to the elite class and did not like the non-elites to gain university admissions as their quotas were taken by non-elite Tamils and Sinhalese. 

The same incidents of riots are being repeated as an argument to claim Eelam. These are all in the past and every incident has its own story and there is no smoke without a fire. However, what needs to be said is that in spite of the scores of killings by the LTTE, no riots took place against Tamils as the people knew that while all the LTTE were Tamils, all the Tamils were not LTTE. In fact, there have been more caste-related riots amongst the Tamils than the handful of incidents repeatedly quoted. There has been no riot for over 40 years. 

With the economic crisis aggravated after the Covid-19 pandemic, all communities in Sri Lanka are suffering some form of hardship. Just because the Sinhalese are the majority, they do not enjoy any special privileges at all. In fact, they are the most marginalised community when looking at the ownership of wholesale, retail, and other business units and industries across Sri Lanka. Those in the majority and in important roles are made to flag “reconciliation and together” mottos while the minorities are claiming separate lands, separate privileges, separate this, that and the other. No one is taking these demands and looking at the merit of the demands and the validity of the demands. All are using the demands for political gain and personal agendas. 

The bottom line is, how can Sri Lanka solve or provide solutions to a problem that does not exist and why should Sri Lanka provide political solutions advantageous only to politicians and not to the people? Solutions must be to problems that exist in the present and solutions must be advantageous to the people and not to politicians.

(The writer is a political analyst and was previously the International Human Rights Commission’s Goodwill Ambassador for Sri Lanka)

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(The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.)