The Evolution of Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka

Arul S. Aruliah and Anusha Aruliah

Wecan chart ourfuture clearly and wisely
only when we know the path which has led
to the present.
-Adlai Stevenson.

Introduction
Ethnic conflict in the world today is a
familiar situation. History is integral to
understanding the ethnopolitics of any
nation. Such is the case in Sri Lanka.Sri
Lanka is an island nation located off the
southern tip of India's coastline. Its history has been as varied as the many
names it has had, among them
Tamaraparani, Taprobane, Lanka, Ilam,
Serendib, Ceylon and, in 1972, Sri Lanka.
The Sinhalese (mostlyBuddhist) constitute approximately 74 percent of the
population; the Tamils (mostly Hindu)
are approximately 18 percent (1981 census); and Tamil-speaking Muslims constitute 7 percent of the population. Other
minoritiesincludeBurghers1and Malays.
Islam was introduced to Ceylonby Arab
traders around the eighth century A.D.
The Portuguese introduced Catholicism
in 1505. In 1638, the Portuguese were
replaced by the Dutch, who were subsequently overthrownby the British (1796)
in their quest to expand the British Empire. The British were a different type of
invader. Their policies left a lasting impact on SriLanka in a way that had never
occurred before. Historian D.C. Mendis
suggested that:
[the] Portuguese [had]left behind the
Roman Catholic Church, and the
Dutch their system of law. The British
administrative system, helped by the
great changes brought about by the
modem industrialcivilization, helped
Ceylon to be unified and the people to
progress once more (Mendis 1932,8).

Arul S. Aruliah is the managing editor of Refuge

and guest edited this s p e d issue on Sri Lanka.
Anusha Aruliah is a student of political scienceand
philosophy at the University of Toronto.

Refuge, Vol. 13, No. 3 (June 1993)

The British provided the Ceylonese

with an infrastructure that was quite
modem. But unification, in a traditional
nationalist sense (that is, identification
with the nation as opposed to ethnic or
regional identification), was noticeably
absent. Prior to the arrival of the British,
the northem regions of Sri Lanka were
not integrated with the south. In fact,
there were three independentkingdoms.
"Out of what once were the two
Sinhalesekingdoms of Kandy and Kotte
and the Tamil kingdom of Jaffna, in 1802,
the British created their first crown
colony, Ceylon" (U.S. Committee for
Refugees 1991,4).
English education was beginning to
be the norm for the higher castes of both
the Sinhalese (the g o y i g a d ) and their
Tamil counterparts, the vellalas. The anglicized schooling that prevailed was
taught at missionary schools in the late
nineteenthandearlytwentiethcenturies.
For many new Christians, motives for
conversion were more practical than religious. They became entitled to free
schooling. Introduction of the NorthSouth railway system facilitated the
southward migration of English-educated Tamils. And, as a result, "during
the first two decades of Sri Lankan independence, Ceylon Tamils, who constitutedonly12%of theisland'spopulation,
held 40% of public sector employment"
(Perera 1992).There was a feeling in the
majority community that the minority
community had a disproportionate hold
on public service positions.
Furthermore, during the colonial period, there was growing discontent
within the Sinhala-Buddhistcommunity
on the secondary position of Buddhism
in the country. "The Buddhist revival of
the second half of the nineteenth century
was the first phase in the recovery of
national pride in the island, the first step
in along process which culminatedin the
growth of nationalism in the twentieth
century" (De Silva 1981,343).The truth
of this becomes obvious when placed in

context. At the time, the British governors enforced a policy of state neutrality.
Buddhism was slowly and convertly
supported, especiallyafter the Kotahena
riots of 1883 (a Buddhist-Catholic conflict), with small monetary donations for
the repair of a dagold and a gift of lamps.
The incrementalgrowth of Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism ensured that elitist
Christian Sinhala leaders, unlike their
Tamil brethren, would conform to nationalist principlesif they wanted to lead
that community. Communal conflicts
were religion-based at the turn of the
century; as the end of the twentieth century draws near, Sri Lanka is being ravaged by a civil war that has its basis in an
ethno-cultural perspective. "Ethnicidentity has taken over from religious identity" (Stirrat 1984 197).In fact, in the 1983
riots that devastated Colombo, the Sri
Lankan capital, both SinhaleseCatholics
and Buddhists camed out attacks on
Tamil Catholics (Stirrat 1984). The
change in the nature and size of the conflict in Sri Lanka has ramifications beyond the tiny nation itself, especially for
countries at the receiving end of the
steady stream of refugees from SriLanka.
The ethnic struggle used to have political beneficiaries; now there can be no
beneficiaries until the war is over. The
evolution and escalation of the conflict
took place over a number of years with
the tacit acknowledgment and later direct intervention of the state. There were
many indications of where the conflict
would lead-the type of government
and its problemsafter independenceand
the communal riots that plagued the
country are examples. After 1983, the
very nature of the conflict changed. But
the progress of the conflict was left unchecked. Painfully tragic results have
changed the way of life for a nation.

Stirrings of Discontent
The religious conflicts that occurred in
the early 1900s were the Sinhalese and
Tamils' responses to the emerging sense
3

of animosityagainst an alienculturewith
all its trappings. One element of the alien
culture was the Catholic church. There
were a series of violent encounters between Catholics and Buddhists:
Ambalangoda in 1890, Wadduwa in
1891, Kalutara in 1897 and
Anuradhapura in 1903; and between
Catholics and Hindus Negombo in 1899
and Neervali in 1902.
The elite class of Sri Lankan society
did not have well defined "racial"
boundaries at the time. They were sirnply Ceylonese. A combination of wealth
and English education elevated them to
that position. They were mobilizing
among themselves to become a viable
political force.Their motives were quite
clear-cut. They were being barred from
the highest echelons of the land, no matter how qualified or how capable. In an
extreme example, a Whitehall (British
government)official tolda prominentSri
Lankan lawyer that the man chosen to be
attorney-general "must be a good lawyer and ought to be pure white.. ." (De
Silva 1981,322) .
Political representation under the
British was in the form of the Legislative
Council. The ratio for the council, whose
purpose was to elicit information about
local conditions, was fixed, by convention, at three Europeans and one from
each Ceylonese community: Sinhalese,
Tamil and Burgher. However, the effectiveness of the representation was
greatly limitedby the fact that the successive Sri Lankan members of the council
all tended to come from the same families. Finally the Ceylon National Congress was formed in 1917; it was a
multiracial, multidenominational party
whose common links were elitist in nature. Until 1921, its leader was Sir
Ponnambalam Arunachalam, a Tamil,
whose prestige was so great that it subsequently made his post prestigious:
What distinguished elite politics in
Ceylon in the first two decades of the
twentieth century from succeeding
decades was the harmony that prevailed between the Sinhalese and
Tamil leaderships. In the political jargon of the day there were two majority
communities, the Sinhalese and the
Tamils, and the minorities were the

smaller racial groups. The situation

changed findamentallyafter 1922 [the
time of the Donoughmore Constitution] when ... there was one majority
community the Sinhalese-the Tamils
now regarding themselves increasingly as a minority community. It has
remained so ever since (DeSilva 1981,
387).

According to K.M.De Silva, this

promisingtime inSriLankanhistorywas
unparalleled. However, there were
stirrings of trouble from the outset. It is
true that these were not of ethnic leanings, but were instead due to the fact that
the Ceylon National Congress was the
bastion of the elite, none of whom shared
the same political outlook. When the
party was formed, there were two identifiable factions: the constitutional elite,
who proposed a political goal of responsible self-government for Ceylon as a
member of the British Empire.The other
sector was radical; they favoured forceful opposition to British rule in the tradition of the Indian model.
In 1919, Sir William Manning, the
new British governor, amved. He did
not approve of the Ceylon National Congress (CNC) and he used his considerable power to hasten the path of
self-destruction that the CNC appeared
after
~ the
to be taking. By the late 1 9 2 0 ~
deliberations over the Donoughmore
Constitution,the shift towards ethnocentric perspectives began. "Whilst the
Sinhaleseleaders favoured the 'one man,
one vote' system, Tamil leaders objected
to this on the grounds that it would give
the Sinhalese majority total control over
the country, and so they demanded some
sort of communal representation to safeguard their position" (Stirrat 1984,198).

But the Tamil leaders did not get what

they demanded. Sri Lanka was unique at
that stage. It was a full twenty years
ahead of its African and Asian counterparts in the British Empire or Commonwealth with its universal suffrage. In
1931, 1936 and 1947, legislatures were
elected by means of universal suffrage
and the Sinhalese majority began to get
more and more power because of their
numbers.
Disenfranchisement and the Issue
of Colonization
When Sri Lanka became an independent
nation in 1948, replete with Westrninster-style democracy, Britain and the
Ceylonese overlooked a fundamental
flaw. By ignoring the fact that, although
Tamils constituteda minority of the general population, they constituted a very
definite majority in certain areas of Sri
Lanka - the northern and, to a slightly
lesser degree, eastern parts of the country - Sri Lanka was left in a state that
could easily have led to disarray and
eventually did so.
Colonization was and remains an
important issue of conflict. It was the
government-sponsored colonization
schemes of predominantly Tamil areas
that caused a problem. "Tamils see it as a
deliberate attempt to deprive their areas
of continuity and thus decrease their
communal bargaining power. They
point out that hardly any Tamils have
been settled under official auspices in
Sinhaleseareas" (Schwarz1988,lO). The
colonizationschemesbegan in the 1930s.
One of the largest of the pre-1953 projects
was the one at Gal Oya in the Amparai
District, which was initially a predominantly Tamil area.

Table 1:Population Change i n Selected Districts

Tamils
Sinhalese
1953
1971 % Change 1953 1971 % Change
Jaffna
477,304 673,043 41
6,183 20,402 230
Batticaloa
130,381 246,582 89
31,174 94,150 202
Trincomalee
37,517 73,255 95
15,296 55,308 262
Puttalam
9,010 30,994 244
31,587 309,298 879
Data adapted from Schwarz 1988,lO

w
g
e
,Vol. 13, No. 3 (June 1993)

The settlement of large numbers of

Sinhalese peasants in the Gal Oya
Basin made it feasible for the government to create a separate electoral district for the Sinhalese and increase
Sinhaleserepresentationin the parliament. Indeed, the Amparai Electoral
District is represented by a Sinhalese
member of parliament (Manogaran
1987,93).

Such colonization has long been recognized as a part of Tamil grievances

because of the loss of power to Tamil
representation. However, the schemes
have been amplified as shownin Table 1.
The prime minister of the newly-independent Sri Lanka, D.S. Senanayake,
assured G.G. Ponnambalam and his
Tamil Congress that Tamil rights would
be protected under the direction of the
United National Party (UNP). He convinced Ponnambalam and others, to
cross the flwr and join the UNP. Among
those who remained in Oppositionwere
S.J.V. Chelvanayakam, a Tamil Christian, and his retinue, who vehemently
opposed the disenfranchisement of Indian Tamilswho were rendered stateless
by D.S. Senanayake's government in
1949. "The legislation denying citizenship and voting rights to most Indian
Tamils was passed by a Sinhalese-dominated parliament to satisfy the Kandyan
Sinhalese, who were resentful [because]
...the agriculturalland and employment
opportunities for the indigenous population were limited (Manogaran 1987,
19).But the underlying fear of Sinhalese
politicians was that the Tamil population, Indian and SriLankan, would unite
against the Sinhalese.
The ease with which the laws were
passed distressed Chelvanayakam who
then founded the Federal Party (FP).His
view was that within a unitary form of
government, minority rights were not
protected and indeed were in considerablejeopardy. He said, "[today],justiceis
being denied to IndianTamils. Someday
in the future, when language becomes
the issue, the same [will] befall the
Ceylon Tamils" (Ram 1989,37). The disenfranchisement of the Indian Tamils
became a contentious issue that demonstrated how much was lacking in the
government structure. Much of the

W g e , Vol. 13, No. 3 (June1993)

blame can be connected to the elite politicians who formulated the political
structure. On a very simplistic level it
could be argued that because of their
Anglicization, they could not see the
necessity of takingintoaccountthe needs
of the thasses. However, it is more likely
that they chose to ignore the social reality, naively assuming that the 5 to 6 percent English-speaking population
would remain in power after successive
elections. By not acknowledging these
realities, the elitists orchestrated their
own downfall.
Emergence of the Language Issue
The man who would eventually destroy
the elitist stranglehold on power came
from that social stratum. Solomon West
Ridgeway DiasBandaranaike,originally
a Christian, was a member of a wealthy,
prominent Sinhalese family. S.W.R.D.
Bandaranaike's father was an Anglophile who named his son for the British
governor, James West Ridgeway. AlthoughBandaranaikewas very well educated in English (heattended Oxford), he
was illiterate in Sinhala4;he was also the
man who was swept into power under
the auspices of the "Sinhala Only" Act.
There was a growing sense of alienation
with the realization that although English was spokenby a very smallminority,
it was the language of the state: the
courts, police, parliamentary debates,
government administration, banking
and university instruction. "Initially, the
Sinhala-languagemovement was purely
anti-Western, but later it began to develop anti-Tamil overtones as well"
(McGowan 1992, 155). Both Sinhalese
and Tamil nationalists denounced English as an official language. Instead, they
advocated a return to suxlbasha,5 which
would provide equal rights for both
Tamil and Sinhalese languages. Soon,
however, Bandaranaike was exploiting
the explosivelanguage issue for his own
political purposes. The election year was
1956, which fortunately for
Bandaranaike, was also the year of the
Buddha Jayanthi:
Jayanthi was the 2,500 year anniversary of the Buddha's enlightenment,
the very epicenter of his 5,000 year
teaching. A that point, Buddhists be-

lieved, the dhanna would be spread

throughout the world and would pm
duce an unprecedented spiritual
awakening. In Lanka, Jayanthihad an
even greater significance, making the
completion of 2,500 years of Buddhism, the life of the Sinhalese race,
and the length of recorded history and
continuous political institutions, a
threefold event of great mystical
power in the Sinhalese mind
(McGowan 1992,150-1).
The Buddha Jayanthiwasinstrumental in bringingreligioninto the fray of the
language and culture wars. With
Bandaranaike denouncing"the invisible
yoke of evil, unenlightened teachings,
practices, habits, customs, and views fostered by the British" (McGowan 1992,
E l ) ,the bhikkhus (Buddhistmonks)were
encouraging many Sinhalese to vote for
Bandaranaike.
At the time of independence, Sri
Lanka was left with two major parties
and some smaller exclusively Tamil parties. The ruling UNP was technically a
non-ethnic party. In reality, its members
were "committed to Sinhalese nationalism" (Obeyesekere 1984, 156); but the
UNP was also committed to unity, or
more realistically, committed to allaying
the fears of either community: " ...[Sir
John] Kotelawala [then prime minister]
assured the Sri Lankan Tamils, during a
visit to Jaffna in late 1954, that appropriatelegislationwouldbe adopted to make
both Sinhala and Tamil the official languages of the country" (Manogaran
1987, 43). This action dismayed many
Sinhalese. Bandaranaike capitalized on
their fears.
TheUNP reversed itsposition in 1955
by declaring that Sinhala should be the
official language, but it was a futile action. To vote for the UNP, the bhikkhus
assured the populace, would be cultural
suicide.The reversal of theUNP position
on language deprived them of whatever
popular supwrt they had from theTamil
population. It was no surprise then that
S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike and the
Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (MEP) coalition6 won a landslide victory in the
April 1956 election. Bandaranaike had
said that the Official Language Act
would have a provision for what he
5

called "reasonable use cif Tamil." However, once in power, any attempt he
made to include Tamil in the Official
LanguageAct was greeted with derision,
and the Opposition accused the prime
minister of conceding the rights of the
Sinhalese to the Tamils. The Federal
Party (led by S.J.V. Chelvanayakam) organized peaceful mass demonstrations
against the "Sinhala Only" Act. Infuri-

demands of regional autonomy. In fact,

in 1926 Bandaranaike promoted the
federal state structure, within the existing unitary state framework to appease
the Kandyan Sinhalese, who were demanding autonomy. The E C Pact was
considered "one of the few statesmanlikecompromises.. .ever tobeattempted
in Sri Lanka" (Ponnambalam 1983,112).
It was abandoned when Sinhalese Bud-

There was a growing cnuareness among Tamil leaders that their

Sinhalese companiots, with whom they had agitaed for
independencejivm the British, were quite willing to subjugate
T M if it waspolitically advantageous.
ated Sinhalese mobs beat the Tamil
protesters; "[this] violense was accompanied by an anti-Tamilriot, resultingin
the killing of more than one hundred
Tanlils at the government-sponsored
GalOya colonization schemeinAmparai
District" (Manogaran 19$7,48).
There was a growing awareness
amongTamilleadersthat their Sinhalese
compatriots, with whom they had a@tated for independence from the British,
were quite willing to subjugate Tamils if
it was politically advantageous. The
Tamil leaders, too, had their motives for
their political strategies; however, much
of their energieswere devbtedto fighting
the openly disaiminatory policies that
the MEP coalition had introduced. By
1957, the Federal Party threatened
Bandaranaike with a campaign of
satyugraha7 unless their demands-parity between Sinhalese and Tamil as two
offidal languages, an end to the planned
Sinhalesecolonizationof predominantly
Tamil areas, the granting of citizenship
rights to "Indian Tamils", and most importantly, regional autonDmy were met.
Bandaranaike" ...wasconvinced that
the Tamils were determined to defend
their legitimate rights and, in order to
avert a major ethnic conflict, he agreed to
negotiates political settlementto the conflict in July 1957" (Manogaran 1987,49).
The settlement was known as the
Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam (B-C)
Pact. Both leaders agreed on a devolution of powers in order to meet the

dhist extremists and the Opposition

voiced their protests in a multitude of
ways. One of the most famous, by J.R.
Jayewardeneof the UNP (whowasoriginally a Christian), was the October 4,
1957 march to Kandy to invoke divine
blessings for the campaign against the BCPact.Jayewardene,who would lead Sri
Lanka after 1977, then said: "[the] time
has come for the whole Sinhalese race,
which has existed for 2,500 years jealously safeguardingits languageand religion, to fight without giving any quarter
to save its birthright" (McGowan 1992,
161).It was said that the B-CPact would
have reasonably assuaged Tamil fears of
domination, but when it was abrogated

nation or state is incomprehensibleto

the popular mind. The emphasis on
the sense of uniqueness of the
Sinhalese past, and the focus on Sri
Lanka as the land of the Sinhaleseand
the country in which Buddhism stood
forthinits purest form, carried memotional appeal compared with which a
multi-dal policwas a meaningless
abstraction (De Silva 1981,512).

While the Sinhalesegovernmentwas

trying to implement its policies, the
Tamil politiaans were attempting to
make clear the distinction between
Sinhalese nationalism and Ceylonese
nationalism, which were being equated
at the time.
Even in 1951, the Federal Party was
setting out the configurations for Tamil
nationalism centred around the
language, history and distinctiveness of
the culture. In 1958, after satyagraha
went into effect, the country was aflame
with riots and four days passed without
the declaration of a state of emergency.
Hundreds of innocent civilians were
murdered. People were tortured, beaten
and shot simply for not being able to
pronounce certain words correctly; a
number of goondass killed their own people who were too frightened to pronounce words correctly. The
government's lack of response would
prove to be the rule instead of the excep
tion, and Tamils, moderatesand extremists, were infuriated (Vittachi 1958).

The Tamil leaders, too, had their motivesfor theirpolitical

strategies; however, much of their energies were devoted to
fighting the openly discriminatorypolicies that the MEP
coalition had introduced.
in April 1958, the threatened campaign
of satyagraha was enforced. Sri Lanka
succumbed to a wave of nationalist tendencies as KM. De Silva explains:
[one] of the immediate consequences
of the transformation of nationalism
was that the concept of a multi-racial
polity was no longer politicallyviable.
In Sinhalese the words for nation, race
and people are practicallysynonymous

and a multi-racial or multicommunal

Bandaranaike also had to deal with .the

many and often bitter conflictswithin his
coalition government. On September26,
1959, he was assassinated by a bhikku
who belonged to a radical right-wing
faction of the coalition. Bandaranaike's
wife, Sirima, immediately assumed
power. Many Sinhalese and Tamil leaders had two very different ideologies as
to where Sri Lanka should head in the
latter half of the twentieth century, This

R4r(ge1Vol. 13, No. 3 (June 1993)

difkrence of opinion would wentually

lead to disaster.
The politics of the 1%0s were essentially under the control of Mrs. Sirima
Bandaranaike, the leader of the Srih d c a
Freedom Party (SLFP), who was returnedtopowerinJuly1960.Theworld's
first female prime minister was "not reluctant to take on two inflammable issues at the same time" (De Silva 1981,
512). She passed the provisions of the
'Sinhala Only' bill into effect which
stated that Sinhala should be the language of administration by 1961. "The
Tamil people must accept the fact that
the Sinhala majority will no longer permit themselves to be cheated of their
rights" (McGowan 1992, 161), she explained. This was despite the unofficial

forthe armed strugglethat ensued in the

following decades.
Mrs. Bandaranaike's party stayed in
power until 1965 when Dudley Senanayake (son of former prime minister,
D.S. Senanayake), returned to the office
of Prime Minister, which he held briefly
in 195253. Dudley Senanayake came
when Sri Lanka's literacy (excludingthe
0-4 age group) was almost 85 percent.
"[As] a result of its long standing
commitment to free education (in the
sense of free tuition) at all levelsprimary, secondary and tertiary-%
Lanka in the 1960sbecame an outstanding example of the growing global phenomenon of educated unemployed" (De
Silva 1981, 538). Dudley Senanayake's
government devised a program of agri-

Theproblem has changed in mature. Initially, the c& was a

constitutional one involving the protection of basic minority
righ& that were subject to political exploitation. In more recent
years, increased militancy has rendered the concept of
polih'cal victors inconceivable.
electoral promises she had made to the
FP. The Federal Party, in turn, initiated
civil disobedience, which led, for the first
time, to military suppression of the Tamil
disobediencein the north and east. Mrs.
Bandaranaike also implemented state
control over all state-aided secondary
schools. The powerful Roman Catholic
minority was incensed and fought
against it. However, they, too, were
forced to acquiesce.
In 1962, the armed forces (consisting
mainly of Sinhalese Christians and
Burghers) attempted a coup $&at that
was put down. The acceptance of
"Sinhala Only" by the major parties gave
rise to an exodus of disillusioned intelligentsia from all communitieswho left Sri
Lanka to go to England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Many Tamils
also went to "Nigeria, Ghana, Zambia
and other emergent countries of Africa
which wanted their learning, skills and
expertise" ( P o ~ a m b a l a m1983, 112).
These wealthy expatriates would ultimately serve as a financial support base

Refkge, Vol. 13, No. 3 (June1993)

cultural activities designed to incorporate the ranks of the unemployed, but the
educated were not interested in those
types of jobs. The educated unemployed
became very receptive to the criticisms
made by the Opposition.
Mrs. Bandaranaike came back into
power in 1970after combining the SLFP
with the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and
the Communist Party under the banner
of the United Front (UF). Mrs.
Bandaranaike introduced ethnic quotas
at universities in response to a general
Sinhalese feelingthat Tamils were somehow being favoured in admissions. The
system of quotas, known as "standardization," was implementedin 1972.It was
a system "in which marks obtained by
candidates for university admission
[were]weighted by giving advantage to
certain linguistic groups and/or certain
districts" (Schwarz1988,9).The government ostensibly sought to help the less
proficient areas of Sri Lanka - in particular, Kandy and the upcountry
Sinhalese.

~ o w w e rthis
, goal was not necessarily achieved:
[Standardizqtion]did not lead to better chances for schools in backward
and ruralareasasissometimesalleged.
In fact provincialdistributionof places
remained almost unaltered except for
afall in the shareof scienceadmissions
from the Northern province.It is in the
ethnicbreakdownthat the real impact
can be seen. The percentage of Tamil
medium students entering courses in
engineeringfell from 40.8%in 197011
to24.496in 197314(De SilvainSchwarz

1988,9).
The corresponding period saw the
emergence of m e d militancy among
Tamil students. Tamil moderate leaders
became increasingly discredited in the
eyes of the Tamil people because of issues like standardization but what finally reduced their political clout was
their inability to protect the Tamil population from violence. Mrs. Bandaranaike's governmentclamped downhard
on Tamils who supported secession,and
Tamils living in predominantly
Sinhalese areas began to feel the brunt of
the repression. Those who lived in the
North also faced repression in many
quarters, and they reacted:
'

The result was a spreading militancy

and the growth of a martial spirit in a
people who had long been known for
passiveness.... But a generation of
Tamil youth, raised in &I almost perpetual stateokonflictwith the govemkent-boycotts of schools,picketingof
government offices, the performance
of satyagraha, and the hoisting of black
flags to protest government action+
had been radicalized (McGowan 1992,

In).
These radicalized youth, determined
and fuelled by the conduct of the state
police force, were the beginnings of the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam militant group. In 1975, their leader,
Velupillai Prabhakeran, led a small
group w ~ d - r e s p o n s i b i l i t forthe
y
killing o
pro-government mayor of
Jaffna. In retabtion, the police and the
army detained and tortured over one
hundred Tamil studentsfor a year. None
were ever formally charged, "establishinga pattern of collectivepunishmentfor
7

actscommittedagainstSinhaleseauthority" (McGowan 1992, 177). After each

communal riot, one of the most violent
occurring in 1977, Tamils increasingly
viewed the conflicts as struggles for personal and cultural survival instead of a
confrontation over constitutional rights.
The escalation was visible and Mrs.
Bandaranaike's governmentwas instrumental in using the police and armed
forces as weapons of the state against its
own indigenous population.
In 1977, J.R. Jayewatdene and the
UNP came to power. It was a year of
reckoningfor SriLadca. During the election campaign "[the] people's hatred of
the long queues for essential foodstuffs,
of injustices .. had been exploited with
skill. At the same time wery reactionary
tendency, too, had been made use of"
(Piyadasa 1984,%). In the same election,
a majority of Tamilssupported the Tamil
United LiberationFront (TULF)position
as enunciated in the Vaddukoddairesolution:

The convention resolvesthat the restoration and recowtitution of the Free,

Sovereign, Secular Socialist State of
Tamil EELAM based on the right of
self determination inherent to every
nation has become inevitable in order
to safeguard the very exbtence of the
Tamil nation in this country (TULF in
Perera 1992).

Jayewardene had made electoral

promises tothe Tamils specificallyabout
their employment and education grievances. But like many other Sinhalese
leaders, these were more platitudesthan
promises. By 197% the Tigerswere carrying out more attackson people and structures that had government links.In July
of that same year, Jayewardene gave the
the army a mandate to enforce the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which curtailed civil liberties and enforced what
could essentially be called military rule
in the northern and eastern provinces. In
1981, there was spate of mti-Tamil violence in response to attado by the Tamil
Tigers, but the communal riots of 1983
were the catalysts for full-fledged avil
war.
At present, Sri Lanka is a country in
dire straits. Refugees stream out of the
country in record numbers to escape the
8

consequences of the daily battles being

fought in the north and east. Post-1983
has been a traumatic time for Sri Lanka.
The Sinhala-Tamilconflict, which could
have been averted with some forethought and a strong stance against political exploitation, appears to be
uncontrollable in its present state. The
problem has changed in nature. Initially,
the crisiswas a constitutionalone involvingtheprotection of basicminority rights
that were subject to politicalexploitation.
Inmorerecent years, inaeasedmilitancy
has rendered the concept of political victors inconceivable. The survival of Sri
Lankan society is now threatened, and
the composition of minorities in the social fabric has been tom asunder. Inflammatory statements are the norm now for
both the Sinhalese and Tamils. Sri Lanka
is undergoing a most difficult time in its
history. It remains to be seen whether a
solution [see Manogaran in this issue ] or
solutions can be found to the complex
and convoluted questions that make up
the conflict.
Notes
Burghers: The Eurasian descendants of
Dutch colonists.
Goyigama: the highest of the major
Sinhalesecastes; there are subcasteswithin
the caste of the goyigama. Literally "agriculturalist" (Vellala:the Tarnilequivalentof
goyigama). The parallel caste systems of
both Sinhalese and Tamils indicates the
similarity between the two groups. "[It]
may wellbe that SinhaleseandTamilshave
much in common genetically, their separation being, like so many similar cleavages
the world over, primarily a linguistic and
cultural one" (Farmer 1%3,8). In much of
the literature concerning this subject,
"race" and "ethnicity" have been used interchangeably. [seeRamchandran in this issue on the role of culture in the ethnic amfiict]
Dagoba: A Buddhist relic mound.
The language is Sinhala. The people and
culture are S i e s e .
Swrrbasha: Indigenous languages-Siala
and Tamil
Mahajana Eksath Peramuna was formed
by Bandaranaike's party, the Sri Lanka
Freedom Party, the Viplavakari
[~evolutionar~]
~ ~ a n~k a m~a a k a jparty,
a
the Basha Peramuna (Language Front)and
independents.

7. Satyapha: Civil disobedience movement

along the Gandhian pattern.
8. Goonda: Hoodlum, unemployable
vagabond

References

De Siva, KM. 1981.A History of Sri k m h .

London: C. Hurst and Company.
Farmer, B.H. 1%3. Ceylon: A Divided Nation.
London: Oxford University Press.
Manogaran, Chelvaduai. 1987.Ethnic Confiict
and Reconciliation in Sri kmkn. Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press.
McGowan, William. 1992.Only Mm? Is Vile:The
Tragedy of Sri Lanka. New York Farrar,
Straus and Girow.
Mendis, G.C. 1932.The Early History of Gylon.
Calcutta: YMCA Publishing House.
Obeyesekere, Gananath. 1984. "The Origins
and Institutionalization of Political
Violence." In Sri Lanka:In Changeand Crisis,
edited by James Manor. London: Croom
Helm Ltd.
Perera, Jayantha.1992."PoliticalDevelopment
and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka." lournu1 of
Rejugt~Studies 5,2,136-48.
Piyadasa, L. 1984.Sri Lanka: The Hdmaust and
After. London: Marrarn Books.
Ponnambalam, Satchi. 1983. Sri Lanka: The
National Question and the Tamil Liberation
Struggle. London: Zed Books Ltd.
Ram, Mohan. 1989. Sri Lanka: The Fractured
Island. New Delhi: Penguin Books.
Schwarz, Walter. 1988.The Tamils of Sri h k a .
Fourth edition. London: The Minority
Rights Group.
Stirrat, R.L. 1984. "The Riots and Roman
Catholic Church in HistoricalPerspective."
In Sri Lunka: In Change and Crisis, edited by
James Manor. London: Cmom Helm Ltd
U.S. Committee for Refugees. 1991.Sn' Lanka:
lsland of Refugees. Prepared by Court
Robinson. Washington: U.S. Committee for
Refugees.
Vittachi, Tarzie. 1958.~ m e r ~ e n &
'58: The Story
of the Ceylon Race Riots. London: Andm
Deutsch Limited.
Wilson, A. Jeyaratnam. 1979. Politics in Sri
Lanka, 1947-1979.London: The McMillan
Press Ltd.

Selected Readings
Gunawardana,RA.L.I-L,ed. 1979.TheSribnka
]ournu1 ofthe Humanities, volume 5, numbers
I 6 2. Peradeniya: University of
Peradeniya.
Hyndman, Patricia. 1988.Sri h k a : Sermdipity
under Siege. Nottingham: RussellPrew Ltd
Weaver, Mary Anne. March 21, 1988."A
Reporter at Large: The Godsand the Stars."
The New Yorker.

w e , VoL 13, No. 3 (June1993)