At the same time, the British imported thousands of additional Tamils from India to work the tea plantations, treating the Indian Tamils much less kindly than they did the Ceylonese Tamils, the imported workers laboring in conditions that approximated slavery.įollowing independence, a predictable backlash was unleashed by the Sinahalese majoritarian government beginning with the Ceylon Citizenship Act, which denied citizenship to Tamils of Indian origin. With greater access to education, Tamils entered the professions and progressed in the colonial civil service. The British, with typical divide-and-conquer tactics, favored the Tamils, placing English-language schools in Tamil neighborhoods. Some of the roots of the conflict, however, lay in British colonial policy. The two groups have key differences: Tamils generally live in the north and east, speak Tamil, and are, predominately Hindu, while Sinhala live in the south and west, speak Sinhala, and are predominately Buddhist. From 1983-2009, civil war raged between the minority Tamil population, who sought a separate state, and the majority Sinhalese government. From 1815-1948, Ceylon was a British colony. Its primary exports are clothing, tea, and spices. Sri Lanka, formerly known as Ceylon, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |