Radical Notes, November 19-20, 2009
Tamil Eelam: Historical Right to Nationhood
by Ron Ridenour
We are running four articles in a five-part series which trace the settlement of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka and the development of the modern Tamil struggle for self-determination. They also expose the cabal of imperialist and reactionary powers that have fortified the Sinhala-chauvinist Sri Lanka regime, and describe the horrific conditions in the so-called “welfare villages” that now hold close to 300,000 Tamil refugees. Finally, the author draws apt comparisons with Israel’s oppression and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon in English, and Serendib in Arabic (which gave rise to the word serendipity) is commonly referred to as the “pearl of the orient” due to its beauty and wealth of natural resources, flora and fauna. Today, it is a land torn apart by hatred: racist government policies, ethnic cleansing, and terror war just ended albeit continuing in the form of incarceration of hundreds of thousands of Tamil people in the north. A key reason for this brutal hatred is the dispute over whether a minority of its people, the Tamils, should have: equal rights with the majority Sinhalese, and if this is denied (as will be shown it has), should they have the right to their own autonomous territory.
Sri Lanka’s first aborigines with continuous lineage are the Tamil people. It is not precisely known when they came to the island, but perhaps as many as 5000 years ago. Archaeologists date the first humans in Sri Lanka to some 34,000 years. Scientists call them Balangoda people, the name of the location where artifacts were found. These hunting-gathering cave dwellers have no current lineage. Read the rest of this entry »