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Sri Lanka Tamil Alienation
Moderate as well as militant Sri Lankan Tamils have regarded
the policies of successive Sinhalese governments in Colombo with
suspicion and resentment since at least the mid-1950s, when the
"Sinhala Only" language policy was adopted
(see Sri Lanka - Emergence of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party
, ch. 1). Although limited compromises
designed to appease Tamil sentiment were adopted, such as the
1959 Tamil Language Special Provision Act and the 1978
Constitution's granting of national language status to Tamil, the
overall position of the minority community has deteriorated since
Sri Lanka became an independent state. Pressured by militant
elements within the Sinhalese community, the UNP and SLFP
political leadership has repeatedly failed to take advantage of
opportunities to achieve accords with the Tamils that could have
laid the foundations for ethnic understanding and harmony. For
example, in 1957 S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike reached an agreement with
Tamil Federal Party leader Chelvanayakam that would have granted
regional autonomy to Tamil-majority areas and recognized Tamil as
a language of administration in those areas. The pact, however,
was never honored by Bandaranaike or his widow. Tambiah called it
"a great opportunity, fatefully missed, to settle the Tamil issue
for all time." Three decades later, after thousands of people in
both ethnic communities had met violent deaths, a similar accord
was reached, but only with the intervention of India.
Several issues provided the focus for Sri Lankan Tamil
alienation and widespread support, particularly within the
younger generation, for extremist movements. Among the issues was
the language problem, which was only partially resolved by the
1978 Constitution's conferral of national language status on
Tamil. Sinhalese still remained the higher-status "official
language," and inductees into the civil service were expected to
acquire proficiency in it. Other areas of disagreement concerned
preference given to Sinhalese applicants for university
admissions and public employment, and allegations of government
encouragement of Sinhalese settlement in Tamil-majority areas.
Until 1970 university admissions were determined solely by
academic qualifications. Because of the generally higher
educational standards of Tamils, their percentage of university
enrollments substantially exceeded their percentage of the
general population. In 1969 for example, 50 percent of the
students in the country's faculties of medicine and 48 percent of
all engineering students were Tamil. During the 1970s, however,
the government implemented a preferential admissions system known
as the "policy of standardization." This was a geographically
based criterion, but because the two ethnic communities tended to
be regionally segregated, such a policy increased Sinhalese
enrollments. The scheme established quotas for 70 percent of
university places on the basis of revenue districts; this
included a special allotment of 15 percent of all openings
reserved for educationally underprivileged districts, which were
predominantly Sinhalese. Only 30 percent of openings were
allotted nationwide on merit considerations alone. By the early
1980s, the policy had proven a statistical success: in 1983 only
22 percent of medical students and 28 percent of engineering
students were Tamils.
The limiting of educational opportunities for Tamils was
reflected in declining percentages of Tamils in the skilled and
professional areas of government service. State-employed Tamil
physicians declined from 35 percent in the 1966-70 period to 30
percent in 1978-79; engineers from a 38 percent average in the
1971-77 period to 25 percent in 1978-79; and clerical workers
from an 11 percent average in 1970-77 to a little more than 5
percent in 1978-79. By 1980 the percentage of Tamil employees in
the public sector, excluding public corporations, was roughly
equivalent to their percentage of the population, or 12 percent.
Political factors played a role in the decline in the number
of Tamils in public service. Under the so-called chit system,
which became pervasive when Sirimavo Bandaranaike was in power
during the 1970s, the influence of a parliamentarian was needed
to secure a government job (the chit being a memorandum written
by the legislator to inform personnel authorities of the
preferred candidate). The Jayewardene government made the
machinery of patronage still more overt by giving each legislator
"job banks" of lower level positions to be distributed to their
followers. The expanding role of patronage on all levels of the
civil service had two implications for Tamils: first, merit
qualifications that would have benefited educated Tamils were
sacrificed to patron-client politics; second, the patronage
system provided Tamils with little or no access to public
employment because their political representatives, especially
after the 1977 general election, had very limited influence.
Government-sponsored settlement of Sinhalese in the northern
or eastern parts of the island, traditionally considered to be
Tamil regions, has been perhaps the most immediate cause of
intercommunal violence. There was, for example, an official plan
in the mid-1980s to settle 30,000 Sinhalese in the dry zone of
Northern Province, giving each settler land and funds to build a
house and each community armed protection in the form of rifles
and machine guns. Tamil spokesmen accused the government of
promoting a new form of "colonialism," but the Jayewardene
government asserted that no part of the island could legitimately
be considered an ethnic homeland and thus closed to settlement
from outside. Settlement schemes were popular with the poorer and
less fortunate classes of Sinhalese.
Indian Tamils, poorer and less educated than their Sri Lankan
Tamil cousins, since independence have endured an equally
precarious situation. Although agreements with India largely
resolved the issue of their nationality, 100,000 Indian Tamils
remained stateless in the late 1980s. Those holding Sri Lankan
citizenship and remaining loyal to Thondaman's progovernment
Ceylon Workers' Congress were largely indifferent to Sri Lankan
Tamils' militant demands for an independent state, but endemic
poverty among plantation workers and occasional harsh treatment
at the hands of the police and Sinhalese civilians made the
people more receptive to leftist ideology and threatened the
traditional tranquility of the inland hill country.
Data as of October 1988
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