Posts Categorized: History

On the Tamil National Army (TNA)

RAW’s malformed Baby that lived for 9 months by Sachi Sri Kantha, June 10, 2024  As a chronicler of Eelam history of the 20th century, I had been highlighting issues and items that demands a record and focus. One such item was the brief existence of Tamil National Army (TNA), a malformed baby of India’s… Read more »

Tarzie Vittachi on Abrogation of B-C Pact

Excerpts from Emergency’58, The Story of the Ceylon Race Riots by Tarzie Vittachi, Andre Deutsch, 1958, courtesy TamilNation.org “The Prime Minister, Mr S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, continued with his year-long efforts to convince the people that the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam Pact which he had made with the Federal Party a year ago, was a fool-proof solution of the… Read more »

Burning of the Jaffna Public Library

43rd anniversary remembrance  by British Tamils Forum, London, June 1, 2024 June 1st evokes the scar of the Burning of Jaffna Public Library in 1981, the irreplaceable asset of Tamil people. This calculated arsenic destruction was one of the major cultural genocides against Tamil people masterminded by Sri Lankan state to destroy historic evidence of Tamil… Read more »

Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields Cast a Long Shadow

Impunity for crimes committed during the civil war has fuelled post-war repression in Sri Lanka. by Al Jazeera, May 18, 2024 By Madura Rasaratnam and Ambihai Akilan Published On 18 May 202418 May 2024 Today we mark the 15th anniversary of the bloody end of Sri Lanka’s three-decades-long civil war. This anniversary comes around at a critical historical… Read more »

Dead or Alive?

Parents of children gone in Sri Lanka’s civil war have spent 15 years seeking answers by Krishnan Francis, Associated Press, New York, May 18, 2024 MULLAITIVU, Sri Lanka (AP) — For 15 years, Rasalingam Thilakawathi has been trying to find out what happened to her daughter at the end of Sri Lanka’s bloody civil war…. Read more »

15 Years Today – A Massacre in Mullivaikkal

by Tamil Guardian, London, May 18, 2024 To mark 15 years since the Sri Lankan military onslaught that massacred tens of thousands of Tamils, we revisit the final days leading up to the 18th of May 2009 – a date remembered around the world as ‘Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day’.  After providing an initial death toll of 40,000, the UN… Read more »

Sri Lanka Scene: Kumaratunga’s Strategy Fails

by T. Sabaratnam; published May 12, 2004 Weekly Review Kumaratunga’s Strategy Fails LTTE leader Velupillai Pirapaharan has sent President Chandrika Kumaratunga the clear message that he is not prepared to help her overcome her problems in the guise of peace talks, political analysts say. “He wants to watch her sincerity, her government’s stability and her capacity… Read more »

Diaspora Tamil Archives

by Diaspora Tamil Archives, Norway புலம்பெயர் தமிழ் சுவடிகள் காப்பகங்கள் ABOUT US  

Uduvil Remembers Its Founder Principal

In its bicentennial year by Shiranee Mills, Sunday Times, Colombo, April 7, 2024 In the bicentennial year of Uduvil Girls’ College, especially during the month of April, our thoughts dwell closely on the founder principal of the school, Harriet Wadsworth Winslow (née Lathrop), whose birthday falls on April 9. Born in 1796, in Norwich, Connecticut, in… Read more »

Caste System in Medieval Tamil Nadu

Not Manusmriti, British—caste system in medieval Tamil Nadu solidified after Cholas fell by Anirudh Kanisetti, ThePrint.in, March 24, 2024 Middle castes reveal a complicated social history. Caste is rooted in politics, not just religion Illustration of the castes and tribes of South India | Representational image | Commons As always with India’s historical debates, the… Read more »

Stamp of Defiance and Aspiration

by Tamil Guardian, London, August 29, 2012 Stamps such as the one above were produced by Tamil protestors during the mass civil disobedience movement of February to April 1961 when Tamils across the North-East united to oppose the Sri Lankan government’s rapidly escalating ‘Sinhala Only’ policies. The protests brought the civil administration in the Tamil… Read more »

“Col” Karuna’s Eastern Tiger Revolt

Against LTTE 20 years ago by DBS Jeyaraj, Daily Mirror, Colombo, March 16, 2024 Karuna projected himself as the “Eastern national leader”, second only to Prabhakaran in the Tiger hierarchy Karuna kept LTTE resistance alive during the days of the IPKF. He and his former deputy Reagan led the counter offensive against the ill-fated Tamil… Read more »

Arwi: The Lost Language of the Arab-Tamils

by Kamala Thiagarajan, BBC, London, February 12, 2024 Coastal towns across southern India still reveal how medieval travellers once used the power of language to further trade and forge deep connections. One warm summer evening in 2008, when Mohamed Sultan Baqavi was a 26-year-old student at Arabic College in the South Indian town of Vellore,… Read more »

Vaddukkottai Memories: Jaffna In The 1960s

by Glenn Yocum, Colombo Telegraph, May 21, 2013 Prof. Glenn Yocum Confessions:  I’m an American, now almost 70 years old.  I spent a year in Vaddukkottai, Jaffna in 1967-68.  Technically, at that time I was a “missionary,” though I never converted anyone or wanted to.  Impelled much more by adventure and wanderlust than any sense of “calling,”… Read more »

How to Capture Birds of Freedom

Picturing Tamil Women at War  by Vindhya Buthpitiya, Trans Asia Photography, Vol. 13, Issue 1, May 1, 2023 https://doi.org/10.1215/21582025-10365016 Abstract This article examines the uses of images of women fighters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam during and after the Sri Lankan civil war (1983–2009) to explore the contrasting mobilizations of visual representations of… Read more »

Ganguly 2018: Ending the Sri Lankan Civil War

by Sumit Ganguly, Daedulus 147 (1): 78–89., January 1. 2018 PDF Abstract The Sri Lankan Civil War erupted in 1983 and dragged on until 2009. The origins of the conflict can be traced to Sri Lanka’s colonial era and subsequent postcolonial policies that had significantly constrained the social and economic rights of the minority Tamil… Read more »

Wigneswaran Points Out the Root Cause of Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Conflict

Many Sinhalese consider Wigneswaran a racist and tend to ignore his views. But no matter how problematic it is, he points to the viewpoint prevailing in the Tamil society in general about the history of Sri Lanka. by P. Harshani Dias, Sri Lanka Guardian, Colombo,  May 20, 2023 Colonial Architecture, Jaffna, Northern Province, Sri Lanka,… Read more »

Prof. Singer 1992: Sri Lanka’s Tamil-Sinhalese Ethnic Conflict

Alternative Solutions by Marshall Singer, Asian Survey, Vol. XXXII, No.6, (University of California Press), August 1992 Marshall R. Singer is Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh. This article is a version of a paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, April 1992, Washington, D.C. Warfare… Read more »

The Sri Lankan Civil War: Notes for UPSC Exam

by Byju’s Exam Prep, accessed January 22, 2024 UPSC is the arm of the Indian civil service which administers the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) exam. The war in Sri Lanka between the separatist Tamil forces and the government was a heavy one with a death toll of over 150000 from both sides including civilians. Starting… Read more »