Before 1500 AC there were two states in the island, the Tamil state and the Sinhala state.
The Tamils and the Sinhalese, the two indigenous peoples, called the country by various titles at different periods. The new name “Sri Lanka” was bestowed by the Republican constitution on 22 May 1972 by the Sinhala government. The Tamils continued to call the country “Ilankai”. The Tamil consciousness led to the naming of the north and east of Sri Lanka, the Tamil traditional homelands as Tamil Eelam.

Sri Lanka is a country of heterogeneous culture, with two separate and distinct ethno-linguistic nations, namely the Sinhala nation and the Tamil nation and four great religions - Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. For reasons of history, the Sinhalese live in the west, south and centre, and the Tamils in the north and east. Until the administrative unification of the country by the British in 1833, this pattern of distribution was one of mutual exclusiveness. This was a natural result of differences in language, religion and culture and of political organisation from time immemorial under separate Sinhalese and Tamil kingdoms. The areas the Sinhalese and the Tamils occupied were their traditional and exclusive sovereign homelands, to which they owed their first loyalty.

Tamil Culture

Tamil culture is nothing else but the Tamil way of life, a pat-tern of gracious living that has been formed during the centuries of Tamil history. It has been conditioned by the land, the climate, the language, the literature, the religions, the customs, the laws, the festivals, the food and the games of the Tamil people, by the clothes, the jewellery, traditional music and dance and musical instruments associated with them.

The Tamil Language and Tamil Literature

The Tamil Language has been spoken basically in its present form in the island for the last two thousand years and it continues even now to be the living language for forty to fifty million people - about forty million people in India, more than two million people in Sri Lanka and over two million people living scattered over Malaysia, Figi, Mauritius, South Africa, Vietnam and Indonesia and even Trinidad Tamil is as much a classical language as Greek, Latin or Sanskrit, with the difference that while her ancient contemporaries have changed beyond recognition or been long regarded as “dead”, Tamil continues to be one of the most vigorous of modern languages, and perhaps offers the only example in history of an ancient classical tongue which has survived to this day yet remains young as it was two thousands years ago. The rich and hoary Tamil Literature has made definite contributions to world thought and letters. The love poetry of the Tamils is the produce of a people among whom the finest ideals of courtship and wedlock had long been cherished. The ethical poetry of the Tamils has been the wonder of all foreigners who have studied it.

If the English be the language of commerce, French the language of diplomacy, Italian the language of love and German the language of philosophy, then Tamil is the language of devotion.

The tradition of Bhakthi and the ideal of tolerance explain the fact that nearly every world religion can claim in Tamil a voluminous literature. Tamil culture has been enriched by poetical works of Saivaites, of Vaishnavites, of Jains, of Buddhists, of Muslims, of Catholics and of Protestants. No other language in the world has been the vehicle of the epic poetry of so many different religions.

Culinary Art

The Tamil food is comparatively simple and nourishing, besides being very healthy.

Rice is the staple food of the Tamils and it is cooked in numerous ways. “Rice” is a Tamil word.

Though majority of the Sri Lankan Tamils are Hindus, yet all of them are not vegetarians. Rice is eaten with dishes called “Kari” (The word “curry” is derived from the Tamil word Kari). As the Tamil homeland skirts the north-eastern coastal areas, fish has become an important part of the Tamil diet. A variety of food is made from rice flour and flour made from maize and millet. Coconut milk and spices form important ingredients in Kari. Pulses and leafy vegetables are commonly used. There are a few post prandial delicacies peculiar to the Eelam Tamils. “Rasa Valli Kilanku” (King Yam pudding) is one such delicacy.

Clothes

Tamil women wear seelai (saree) and chaddai (blouse). Seelai is a piece of cloth six yards in length, usually of bright colour, made of cotton, silk or artificial thread. The seelai can be worn in many ways and the style may indicate the locality or the community of the woman. Tamil girls wear paavaaddai (long skirt) and thaavani (half saree). The traditional dress of the Tamil man is Verddi and Saalvai. Verddi is a piece of white cloth of 6 or 12 feet in length. On festive occasions the men wear silk verddi and saalvai and a collar-less shirt. Tamil men also wear a head dress called the thalaippa for protection from the heat.

Performing Arts

Folk drama called “Naadu Kooththu” is the traditional form of art inherited particularly from Tamils of the eastern region This vibrant form of art is a blend of dance, music and dialogue, with dance as the key element. The basic orchestral instrument is the drum which is played generally by the producer/director of the play called the “Annaavi”.

The drum, the main musical instrument is the herald of folk drama and is the pivot around which the whole folk play rotates. The measured and rhythmic beats of the drum guide the actors to dance, providing the required signals to them, to switch from one situation to another. The other instrument of the orchestra is a pair of cymbals. The musical notes of the cymbals are vital to prompt the actors to sing and the chorus to accompany them. The folk plays are staged in front of temples or in close proximity, because of availability of adequate space for a large open air theatre capable of accommodating audience from several villages and the religious flavour of plays staged.

Festivals

The major festival is Pongal in January which celebrates the arrival of fresh harvest; Navaratri which is celebrated for nine days in September and October marks the victory of Goddess Shakti over the forces of evil; Deepavali is the festival of lights and fireworks in October or November. All major temples have chariot festivals at different seasons of the year. There are special festivals on occasions organised by the temples. National Colour The national colour of the Tamils is aura or gold which is also the colour of ripe paddy or rice seed.

National Tree

The national tree of the Tamils of Sri Lanka is palmyrah which is known as “kalpaha tharu” meaning “the tree that gives all you wish”.

The National Ethnic-Conflict

After a century of colonial rule and colonial plantation economy the British withdrew from Ceylon at independence in 1948. leaving the two nations yoked together under a Westminster-model constitution in a unitary state structure. After independence, the Sinhalese bourgeois political leader-ship, through the arithmetic of the ballot-box and gerrymandering, denied citizenship and franchise rights to one million Tamil plantation workers (one half of the Tamil people). The successive Sinhalese governments, by a policy of state-financed Sinhalese colonisation of the traditional Tamil areas, sought to end the Tamils’ exclusive occupation of their homelands in the north and east. Then in violation of the policy of governments from as early as 1930 to make Sinhala and Tamil the official languages of the country, Sinhala was made the only official language by the government. The Tamils were administered in another’s language and given the oppressive stamp of a subject people.

The doors of government employment were closed to the Tamils. This discrimination was extended to the security services, public corporations and other services, and to the private sector, where proficiency in the official language was an obvious premium.

Educational Imbalance

Tamil parents and educationists resisted the imposition of Sinhala on their children, fearing that they would lose their separate national-ethnic identity as Tamils and would face assimilation and extinction For the benefit of the Sinhalese students, the Sinhala government introduced a partial system whereby the Tamil students were required to obtain higher grade marks to enter the university compared to their Sinhala counter parts. This eliminated the competition and so flagrantly and unjustly excluded the Tamil students from entering universities and prevented them from achieving their aspirations. Religious Intolerance Of the four prevailing religions, Buddhism at first became the de facto state religion of Sri Lanka. The successive governments made further amendments to their constitutions in 1972 and 1978 directing the state “ to protect and foster the Buddha Sasana”. i.e.. to include not only the religious doctrine but also the Buddhist sects, monasteries and monks.

Hindus, Christians and Muslims have only private rights of worship.

Economic Strangulation

From independence, the Sinhalese governments totally isolated the Tamil homelands from all economic development programmes and projects undertaken with massive foreign aid from Western donor countries. As a result, the Tamil people and their homelands have suffered and become the backyard colony of the Sinhalese. There occurred seven major anti-Tamil “race” riots in 1956, 1958, 1961, 1977, 1979, 1981 and 1983; each time the Tamil people living in Colombo and in Sinhalese areas of the south had to assemble as refugees and withdraw to their homelands in the north-east. In all these riots. hundreds of Tamil people were killed, many women raped and countless number of Tamil homes and business establishments looted and burnt.

Tamil National Liberation Struggle

Currently there is a war of national liberation in Sri Lanka. Tamils of the North have been rendered homeless and hapless. The Sinhala government continues its economic blockade so as to starve the Tamils to death. The sick and maimed Tamils have no access to medical treatment because of restriction on medical supplies. Movement of international relief agencies and journalists are curtailed. There is complete censorship imposed on all military and police news and the outside world is kept in the dark.?The successive Sinhala governments not only failed to safeguard the Tamils interests, their language and culture, but actively discriminated against them because of their Tamil birth. To the Tamils, the unitary state became a monstrous irrelevance which served only to perpetuate their disadvantaged condition. The goal of the Sinhala governments was to achieve the conquest of the Tamil nation and its lands by the force of majority legislative power, executive edicts and military repression. In fact. the Tamils have no state now; hence the urge and the just need to create a state, called Tamil Eelam in their own homelands.

Refugees

The refugee crisis in Sri Lanka became acute after the major violence against the Tamil community in July 1983 when over 2,000 Tamils were killed and over 200,000 displaced. In the following years the Sri Lankan government began military operations in the Tamil areas and large number of Tamils were arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and the Emergency regulations. As torture and disappearances continued unchallenged many Tamils fled abroad. It is estimated that over 60,000 Tamils have been killed up to now in the ongoing violence against the Tamil people. The number of Tamil refugees in India is around 160,000. Tamils have also sought asylum in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and the USA.