It may seem irrational now but up until india turned on the tigers there was a constant distrust about indian hegemony. And, indian interference was equated with tamil takeover. I don’t think cold war policies and IndiraG helped much either to change this attitude. That mistrust / fear led to riots and assassination attempts on the then president (JRJ) for letting the IPKF in. In reality there was very little communication between the masses back then and a lot of suspicion.

It’s amazing how much has changed. In the ten years after RanilG things had turned full-circle. I couldn’t believe the changes when I first visited SL 7 years after RG. These days the average singhalese middle-class kid looks forward to travelling to india rather than the west.

Of course it is. People have been telling her the LTTE killed her mom for her entire life, how do you expect her to feel about them?

And yeah, like people have said, SL Tamils consider themselves a different group from Indian Tamils, but at the same time both groups maintain a close connection to each other.

But a Tamil king (1600AD, I think. not sure exactly) did establish a beachhead kingdom in Jaffna….making Sinhalese hot&bothered about invasion to this day, and making the Tamils feel that they have a historic tie to the North.

Actually, Cicatrix, the more recent (as 1600AD is) dates are put forth by those who claim the Tamil presence in Sri Lanka has been relatively short compared to that of the Sinhalese (claimed 2000+ years). The Tamils who argue the “we were here longer” case point to the archaeological evidence showing a tamil presence in Jaffna also 2000 years ago. I don’t believe either claim has been substantiated without controversy and frankly it’s been so long that the whole tact is irrelevant. Just wanted to clear up that it’s not the ~1600 date that makes tamils “feel they have a historic tie” to the north.

On the Sinhala fear of Tamil takeover in general, it seems irrational. If we were still in the time of the three tamil kingdoms it might be founded, but the political reality of now just wouldnt allow such a thing. No one said anyone in this was acting on rational thought though, so whatever.

And Umair, I wasnt trying to rate each group on the terrorism scale, in my post I was trying to emphasize how destructive the IPKF was to the curious. The posters before me only made vague allusions to a confused mandate, I wanted to point out what that confused mandate meant for Tamils.

The Sinhalese know if there’s another Black July 1983, there’ll be hell to pay c/o the Tigers.

And regardless of how it got to be that way it seems to be true, and that’s why it’s hard to condemn them outright… who can Tamil people rely on?

I actually wish both groups could live together as a single country but it seems a whole lot of distrust and horrific recent history would have to be done away with before that happens.

I’ve met Dr. Thiranagama’s daughter. Her biggest fear is that everyone will become so sick of the conflict, and eager for a quick resolution, that the LTTE will get complete autonomous power over the Tamils in the NE.

One of the most moving moments in the film was when Dr. Thiranagama’s sister (who joined the LTTE first) and her husband (who had his own Sinhalese revolutionary force against the govt) wondered if they hadn’t been too naive and idealistic, and confess that revolution had seemed much more glamourous, to their younger selves, than the Human Rights work that Dr. Thiranagama felt called to do.

Anil’s Ghost also describes the way this wasn’t about Sinhalese v Tamil the way the LTTE and GoSL like to say. It was about avaricious power-mongers taking realizing that fomenting trouble could be quite lucrative. And now the LTTE has solidified its position, becoming an odd marxist-moaist totalitarian little regime…looked up to by modern insurgents everywhere.

(sorry. I know I sound pompous. I find my sense of humor and balance deserting me quickly when I’m on these LTTE threads.)

A (belated) response to someone upthread who asked why NOT discuss the IPKF on an Indian site:

All Sri Lankans HATE what the IPKF did (plus or minus the rumored stuff) to the country. It’s one of the few points of unity, and we can all gleefully pile on an Indian-bash with story after story. I remember these awful jokes that went around, giggles for Sinhalese and Tamils….punch line was that Sri Lanka had too many Indians.

So anyway, Ex-Lawyer, good on you for the honor’s thesis and all…but I’m afraid most people aren’t capable if detached intelligent discourse. not when they feel insulted. And that WOULD be the case if the lankans go into detail about the IPKF. That conflict, by the way, has little to do with the present conflict. It sounds as though you’ve conflated the two in your comment about simplistic stereotypes.

Here are some articles about the IPKF’s involvement by the University Teachers for Human Rights, the organization that the woman in No More Tears Sister (Dr. Rajani Thiranagama) helped establish.

Just wanted to point out that I did some creative editing when re-posting Ananthan’s comments to highlight the main UTHR link. If you want to see the original post -pls scroll up to Post #13.

Thanks for phrasing that as you did, Alex, so maybe you can explain to me why I seem one-sided when my point is that the GoSL (in its wild swings from Trotskyite, Capitalist, socialist, etc depending on the party in power) sucked for everybody (Sinhalese and Tamil) butthe rich, and that the LTTE hurt the very Tamils they say they represent.

Does the resentment stem from the fact that I don’t scream about the “atrocities” committed by the GoSL to the exclusion of everything else? I find that that is what pro-LTTE diasporic SL Tamils want. Especially those who never grew up in SL.

And I find that a crying shame since it’s more needlessly divisive pointless arguement. How I can prove to them that Sinhalese and Tamils got along if they insist on beating everyone senseless with grudges (about discrimination) that they never experienced first-hand?

I FAILED my island-wide middle-school test because my sinhalese wasn’t good enough. I was in the Sinhala medium, but my Tamil mother couldn’t help me study, and my sinhala father wasn’t the help-with-homework type.

If I was still there my chances of getting into university would have been piss-poor…unless I rocked the maths. I couldn’t have switched to Tamil medium because I already tracked Sinhala.

My point is that sure, it wasn’t fair. It was even less fair for the hill-country Indian Tamils who were treated so badly by EVERYONE. I don’t hear SL Tamils talking about their snobby behaviour to those other Tamils. I don’t hear expat LTTE supporters talking about the 70,000+ Muslims who were FORCIBLY EVICTED from the NE by the LTTE. I don’t hear LTTE supporters questioning why the “only” group that represents them needs to take such punitive measures against dissent in its own ranks.

Here are some articles about the IPKF’s involvement by the University Teachers for Human Rights, the organization that the woman in No More Tears Sister (Dr. Rajani Thiranagama) helped establish.

The documentary’s focus is of Dr Thiranagama but it’s a complex weave – there are parallel threads independently highlighting her husband Dayapala (who is Sinhalese – a communist revolutionary against the government, and against LTTE), and her elder sister Prof Nirmala (who was the first female political prisoner taken by the sinhalese government as part of the tamil crackdown)… Dr Rajani’s path into LTTE circles ,and her trajectory out of it is detailed – as is her pursuit for justice for women, for her students, for her colleagues, for her people, for her sister – against IPKF, against the SL govt, against LTTE… She was gunned down – likely by someone from within the Tamil community – and that drives the futility of the whole war home. It is a sad movie.

It is the latter, and I’m not calling her a liar. I’m just giving a hypothetical explanation for the rash of emails she receives. It’s not a personal attack, there’s no need to defend her.