Talk:Origins of the Sri Lankan Civil War

Origin of word Sri Lanka
This article, under the heading "Rise of separatism", states that ceylon was renamed sri lanka, a name of sinhalese origin which angered tamils. However, sri lanka is a sanskrit origin word, it was known by that name since antiquity, mentioned by that name even in ramayana/mahabharata, ceylon is a name of portuguese origin, imposed by the british, it is but natural that post-independence, people would want to revert back to the old name. I wonder if it angered the tamils, there are no references/proper reasons provided.. Lilaac (talk) 14:23, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Page move
There has been no discussion on a page move. Please do not move it until a consensus has been reached to do so. Fences and windows (talk) 15:26, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Harvard Interational review - dubious claim of Tamil favouritism
This source is not a good historical source for the baseless claims of favouritism. It is written by a student in a student reviewed international relations journal. It has many inaccuracies and there is poor fact checking, for example, the claim that the British built many English schools in Tamil areas is a complete falsehood, the author has mistaken the British for the American missionaries who built the schools in Jaffna only. She admits that she sourced the claim of favouritism from the CIA lol. Thats not a reliable historical source. The CIA likely got this myth of favouritism from racist Sinhala chauvinists who hated the fact that disproportionate amount of Jaffna Tamils were doing well in professional and clerical jobs. The reason why they did well, is because they had access to good schools thanks to the American missionaries and they had a culture of studying (due to being in a dry zone area, where studying hard was seen as the only opportunity to improve oneself.) If the British really favoured Tamils, then why were up country Tamils, Vanni Tamils, Mannar Tamils, Batticaloa Tamils and Trinco Tamils all educationally backward compared to Jaffna? Did they favour Jaffna Tamils over other Tamils? Absolute nonsense to claim that they did that. Its precisely because of the American missionary schools which gave Jaffna the head start, not any non-existent British colonial favouritism. They were chosen for their merit, not only for the Ceylon clerical services, but even for the clerical jobs in Malaya. On a side note, she also falsely claims that the SL Tamils are mainly descendants of invaders and traders from Chola Kingdom. This is completely false, majority of Tamils are descendants of peaceful settlers (such as Vellalar farmers and their bonded labour), and in the case of the Jaffna Kingdom, ancestral roots were mainly from the Pandya country.Oz346 (talk) 16:59, 29 August 2022 (UTC)


 * "Expert staff analysis" Are you kidding me? An undergraduate student who has made several factual errors is regarded by you as an expert? I have emailed the journal and author of the article, asking them to make corrections. Oz346 (talk) 17:05, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
 * If you want to read a more accurate reliable source on the rise of communalism and ethnic conflict in the early 20th century in Ceylon, then you should read the works of more renowned academic historians who wrote close to that time period. Historian G.C. Mendis has written an article on the rise of communalism, he makes no mention whatsoever on 'favouritism' of Tamils by the British, a false canard basically spread by racists, who want to make the Tamils look like collaborators deserving of discrimination.
 * http://dlib.pdn.ac.lk/handle/123456789/1109
 * The irony is its the ancestors of Bandaranayake and JR Jayawardena who were collaborators and rewarded by the British for their roles in suppressing Sinhalese resistance to the British in the 19th century. They were even awarded land confiscated from the Sinhalese who rebelled against the British (as well as being awarded Mudaliyar/colonial headman positions). Oz346 (talk) 17:20, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

The previous line itself contradicts the baseless claim of favouritism. They were chosen based on their merit, not simply because they were Tamil. Currently, the paragraph you have reverted to is contradictory. Make your mind up, were they chosen because they were favourited on the basis of being Tamil, or were they chosen because of their education and English proficiency?Oz346 (talk) 18:56, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

The Soulbury Commission acknowledges Tamils “..benefitted for over a century from first-rate secondary schools founded and endowed by missionary effort..”

Read from page 48: https://ia600703.us.archive.org/24/items/CeylonConstitution-1945/CeylonConstitution.pdf

- The British selected their candidates for the civil service on a merit basis through an open civil service exam without an ethnic quota.

- report acknowledges Sinhalese ministers discriminated against Tamil candidates in favour of members of their own race but excuses it as “the natural effect of the spread of education and of the efforts being made to bring other portions of the Island up to the intellectual level of one portion of it.” Oz346 (talk) 18:57, 29 August 2022 (UTC)


 * I have given sources for the things I have included. It is no secret that the Sinhalese faced inequalities under the colonial rule. I can't understand why you are trying so hard to censor them. Everything is reliably sourced. Thank you. JohnWiki159 (talk) 16:22, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

No the claim of 'Tamil favouritism' is clearly false and a myth spread without evidence (mainly spread by racist jealous Sinhala chauvinists). I have provided reliable sources which shows that those Tamils were chosen for the clerical posts through a merit based exam, and this directly disproves your baseless claim of favouritism. You can't run away from this discussion without addressing these sources. I am not trying to censor anything! You better read Wikipedia policies because making baseless accusations such as that. Lies and falsehoods have no place on Wikipedia, just because they are popular among Sinhala people (mainly amongst the lay) with no evidence. Your sources are not reliable, they fail on basic fact checking. The fact that you have completely ignored all the points I have made above speaks volumes. And no it was not all 'Sinhalese' who faced inequalities, there were many Sinhalese, particularly those of the low country who went to missionary schools who also got English education as the GC Mendis source proves. It was the majority of Sinhalese (and in fact majority of Tamils too) who faced inequalities due to lack of English proficiency. Oz346 (talk) 17:24, 30 August 2022 (UTC)


 * A further peer reviewed historical source disproving the nonsensical claim of Tamil favouritism, it was clearly due to the later higher proportion of english educated Jaffna Tamils (initially the Burghers were the dominant ethnic group in the clerical services):
 * p240. "It has been seen that the Burghers had practically monopolised the Clerical Service during the early British days. This posi­tion had begun to change with the diffusion of education among the rest of the natives, the Tamils and the Sinhalese. The new system of recruitment and promotion was bound to benefit the latter even further. Thus, for instance, in the new examination for recruitment to the Clerical Service English and Arithmetic were compulsory subjects while Sinhalese and Tamil were optional. As the marks for Sinhalese and Tamil were also included in
 * the total, this was considered by the Burghers to be unfair to them. A Burgher reader complained in the Examiner that this regulation was "making a clear path” for the Sinhalese and Tamils to pass the examination easily, for unlike the Burghers, the former, in addition to English knew these languages as well."
 * https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/34090/1/11015906.pdf
 * The fact that you inserted the word 'claim' is completely unjustified and biased! It is a fact that the clerical posts were achieved through competitive exams!
 * p75 - "A letter in the Observer puts the attitude of the educated Tamil forcefully and clearly when it speaks of the large annual output of educated Jaffnese who ’cannot for the love of money get into an honourable employment to suit their taste and position, either in Government service or private firms; nor are they so circumstanced as to follow their fore- fathers’ avocation agriculture”. The correspondent speaks of large numbers emigrating to India, Singapore and Burma, but of many still left loitering about public offices and streets, seeking employment. He ends by appealing to Government to assist them in settling in agriculture. At much the same time the Overland Examiner was urging the Jaffnese to take to agri­culture as an escape from poverty and was claiming that there were too many educated men among them. The problems which, at the beginning of the
 * period had beset the Burghers, the first community to take to English education, were now affecting the Tamils." Oz346 (talk) 18:06, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
 * And let me remind you GC Mendis and Wijeratne Mudiyanselage Don Dayananda Andradi are both low country Sinhalese scholars! Neither of them support the baseless claim of Tamil favouritism! It was due to the educational headstart that Jaffna (and only Jaffna among the Tamil areas) got, that led to their later higher proportion in the clerical jobs. Oz346 (talk) 18:17, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Another Sinhala scholar Kumari Jayawardena disproving the baseless claim of Tamil favouritism:
 * "Second, economic developments during this period were mainly in the central and western areas of the island. This left the Tamil community in a disadvantaged position. They sought to overcome this by moving in large numbers to employment in the state services, in the private sector and by entering the learned professions. This process was helped by the growth of educational facilities in English in the Tamil regions, particularly the Jaffna peninsula. This meant not only that large numbers of Tamils migrated to the southern and central regions for purposes of employment but also that Tamil traders established themselves in these regions.
 * The opening up of the plantations transformed the economy of Sri Lanka and created opportunities for indigenous entrepreneurs to make large fortunes; some of them converted to Christianity and sent their children to Britain for education. These filled the expanding needs of the state services as well as the need for doctors, engineers, lawyers etc. The local bourgeoisie thus created was multi-ethnic, but predominantly Sinhala, with Burghers and Tamils too entering the various professions and the state services.
 * The Sinhala bourgeoisie found its expansion constrained in various areas. The main import and export trade was dominated by the British and Indians and retail trade throughout the country by Muslim and Chettiar traders. Sinhala traders could not break into these areas because of a lack of access to finance which was controlled by British bankers or South Indian Chettiars. The Sinhala professionals and the educated "petit-bourgeoisie" also felt this competition in so far as they had to vie with Burghers and Tamils for state and private employment. Workers at their own level found themselves confronted with migrant workers from Kerala and Tamilnadu as well as with workers of indigenous minority groups. [Jayawardena 1986: Chapters 3 and 5]."
 * http://www.infolanka.com/org/srilanka/issues/kumari.html Oz346 (talk) 20:06, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Further reliable historical source disproving the favouritism nonsense, from GC Mendis book, Ceylon Today and Yesterday, p.6:

"In fact conflicts arose not only between the Sinhalese and the Tamils, but also between the Low-country Sinhalese and the Kandyan Sinhalese, the Jaffna Tamils and the Batticaloa Tamils, who up to 1815 lived under the control of the Kandyan Kings. The Tamils of the north who earlier came to be distinguished from the Sinhalese by their language Tamil, and their religion-Hinduism, now came to be influenced by the fact that they lived in the Dry Zone and thereby did not have an equal chance of development with the Sinhalese who lived in the fertile Wet Zone. To overcome this disadvantage they took to English education increasingly and secured a greater share of government posts out of proportion to their numbers. The Kandyans who came under Western influences after 1815 had an unequal struggle with the Low-country Sinhalese. Similarly the Eastern Province Muslims and Hindus found themselves at a disadvantage as against the Jaffna Tamils. Hence the Kandyans were un willing to unite freely with the Low-country Sinhalese, and the Muslims and the Hindus of the Eastern Province with the Tamils of the north." Oz346 (talk) 13:34, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

p.208 in the same book:

"The Tamil problem is partly an economic problem. Living in the Dry Zone the Tamils find little opportunity for employment except as cultivators. But Jaffna has a large number of good schools and those educated in them at first went to foreign lands seeking employment. When the Govern ment services expanded at the beginning of this century, educated Tamils came in large numbers to the south. When the Federated Malay States closed their services to immi grants in 1922 they found South Ceylon the only field open to them. Since the beginning of this century the existing schools in Jaffna expanded and new ones came into being. As a result the Tamils increasingly secured posts in the government services. With the advance of education in the Sinhalese areas after the Donoughmore Reforms and after the language of Government was made Sinhalese in 1956, they saw the edifice they had built crumbling before their eyes."

No mention in this entire book of the favouritism lie nonsense! I think GC Mendis a historian who lived through those times would actually know rather than false myth spreaders closer to our time. Oz346 (talk) 13:50, 31 August 2022 (UTC)


 * I have given multiple sources for what I have inserted into this article. If you have any further issues, please take it to the dispute resolution notice board as then third party observers can given their ideas. JohnWiki159 (talk) 06:30, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

You refusing to answer the points I raised is not being constructive and not in keeping with Wikipedia policies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Responding_to_a_failure_to_discuss

The discussion board is meant to have open discussions on the contested passages and issues. You are not supposed to ignore every single point I raised. You are supposed to answer them in keeping with the intent to build a better and more accurate encyclopedia. No I will not go to seek a 3rd party because you are perfectly capable of answering my questions/points.

If after that discussion we still do not reach consensus then a 3rd party opinion would be needed.

Please have the decency to answer my points. You have a long history of discussing other controversial issues on Wikipedia discussion pages, and it's certainly not something you are not qualified or unable to do. Thank you. Oz346 (talk) 14:11, 30 October 2022 (UTC)