(2) The warring parties - An outsider's comments on the Sri Lankan conflict

The Lankan conflict is between the state, which is multi-ethnic but Sinhalese-dominated, and secessionist Tamils, among whom the dominant force, for now at least, is the LTTE – the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Eelam is the name the LTTE gives to the portion of North and East Sri Lanka it wants to hive off as an independent state.

According to official census data, the Sinhalese make up about 74% of the total population of Sri Lanka, and the Tamils 18 %. The Tamils and Sinhalese speak distinct languages with distinct origins: Tamil is a Dravidian language, whereas Sinhala has Sanskrit, Aryan roots. The Tamils are predominantly Hindu whereas the Sinhalese are predominantly Buddhist, although there are many Christians in both groups.

In terms of physical appearance, one can sometimes distinguish Tamils and Sinhalese. There are, for instance, distinct, well-recognised stereotypes for the Jaffna Tamil and Kandyan Sinhalese, but people in both groups frequently share elements of the same generic “Lankan” look, and in fact there is considerable genetic overlap.

In places like Colombo where the Sinhalese and Tamil populations are more mixed, it is often only by language that individual Tamils and Sinhalese can be told apart. In the 1983 Colombo pogrom, Tamils were butchered not on the basis of their appearance, but their inability to speak Sinhala shibboleths.

Neither are the Tamils and Sinhalese demographically or culturally homogeneous populations. For instance, the Tamils of the East and those of the North have many social and cultural differences, while the Indian Tamils, whose ancestors were shipped recently in by the British to work their coffee and tea plantations, have played little role in the conflict.

One should keep in mind too that besides the Sinhalese and Tamils, there are many smaller ethnic and religious groups in Sri Lanka.

These include the Muslims, who have diverse origins but most of whom speak Tamil; various groups of Burghers with mixed Asian and European descent; small groups with other descents, such as the Colombo Chetties, whose ancestors were Indian traders, and finally the Veddhas – the aboriginal inhabitants of Lanka, who have been treated vilely by the Sri Lankan state but were too weak to do anything about it, and now seem doomed to extinction.

The genetic and linguistic ancestors of Lanka’s indigenous Tamils and Sinhalese first came to the island at least two thousand years ago. The Tamilian forbears presumably came from South India, where Tamil is also spoken. The Sinhalese probably came from the North of India – the best guess is from lands in or around what are now Bengal and Orissa.

Hot-headed oafs on both sides of the fence squabble about who came first, but the point is that speakers of both tongues have had ancestors on the island since ancient times.

Ancient too are the sporadic animosities. The Sinhalese manuscript known as the Mahavamsa, or Great Chronicle, which dates back to the 5th Century CE (and derives from earlier texts), tells of the victory of King Dutugamanu, a forbear of today’s Sinhalese, over Elara, a forbear of the Tamils, in about 150 BCE.

That said, for most of the time since Christ walked the earth, speakers of the tongues that evolved into modern-day Tamil and Sinhalese have got along, swapped cultures, and swapped genes. Genetic studies have indeed shown that the Sinhalese’ closest genetic relatives are, by a distance, their Tamil-speaking co-habitees.

As for Ceylon itself, for much of its history there were different kingdoms in different parts of the island. Immediately prior to the encroachment of the Europeans, there were three main kingdoms – in Jaffna, Kotte (close to modern Colombo) and Kandy. It was the departing British who left Ceylon as a single, integrated state for the first time in many hundreds of years.