Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism

The militarisation of the Sinhala-Tamil conflict in Sri Lanka began inthe 1970s when attempts to reconcile by peaceful means the Tamils'claim for basic individual and collective rights with the Sinhaleseneed to allay their chronic sense of insecurity finally failed. Sincethen the struggle has intensified, erupting successively in the burningof the Jaffna Public Library in 1981, the anti-Tamil pogrom in 1983,and the army's assault on Jaffna in 1995. The mainly Hindu SriLankan Tamils have always been separated by language, religion, andhistory from the Buddhist Sinhalese although the minority community inthe island vastly outnumbers the Sinhalese when the 40 million Tamilsin South India are taken into account. The author's analysis isinformed by first-hand knowledge and personal contact with many of theactors involved.