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Posts Categorized: History
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 »
The Fearlessness of Kanji
by Pallavi Pundir, Eater, New York, January 2, 2024 How a simple rice dish became a Tamil symbol of resistance in Sri Lanka Photography by Steephan Sansigan; Interpreter: Gowthami Thillainathan The plan for a surreptitious meeting had been in the works for weeks. On the morning of November 7, Mariyasuresh Eswari got in touch with a… Read more »
Maaveerar Naal 2023
by Nillanthan Maha, November 25, 2023 [Translated from the original Tamil by Google Translate with help from the editor.] This is the fifteenth Veterans Day since the end of the armed struggle. Over the past 15 years, there have been legal issues in the widespread popularization of commemorations such as Heroes’ Day. Fear cannot be… Read more »
Palestine Israel War: Whose Side are the Tamils On?
by A. Nillanthan, October 21, 2023 In the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the armed struggle of the Tamil people began to gain momentum, Tamil movements like EROS, EPRLF, PLOT etc. received military training in Palestine. Those who received such training were called “PLO Rainies” in the homeland. Some of them – Suresh Premachandran,… Read more »
Roots of Ethnic Contestation in the Eastern Province
As in the past, the contestation is over title to the land by PK Balachandran, Daily Mirror, Colombo, October 10, 2023 Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province is again becoming a contested region between ethnic groups. This time round it is more between the Tamils and Sinhalese, with the Muslims in the periphery. . This is because of… Read more »
Reconstructing the Population History of the Sinhalese
The major ethnic group in Śrī Laṅkā by Prajjval Pratap Singh, 6 Sachin Kumar 6 Nagarjuna Pasupuleti, Niraj Rai, Gyaneshwer Chaubey 7 R. Ranasinghe Show all authors Show footnotes Open Access Published:August 31, 2023 DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2023.107797 Download .pdf (.15 MB) Highlights • Higher West Eurasian genetic component in Śrī Laṅkā than South India • A strong gene flow beyond the boundary of… Read more »
Tamil Coin Issued by King Ellalan during the Anuradhapura Era
by Prof. Paramu Pushparatnam, Ezhuna Online, September 6, 2023 [translated from the original Tamil by Google Translate with improvements by S-J] As far as Sri Lanka is concerned, the ancient history of the Tamils is still shrouded in Mahavamsa darkness, but recent archaeological studies in various parts of Sri Lanka have revealed the biographical information… Read more »
History of Tamils in Sri Lanka
by Laxshen in Reddit’s Eelam thread, late August, 2023 The Kingdom of Jaffna by S. Pathmanathan, Colombo, 1978 on Noolaham Primary sources for History of the Sri Lankan Tamils by Dr. Murugar Gunasingham, Sydney, 2005 on Noolaham Sri Lanka: The National Question and the Tamil Liberation Struggle by Satchi Ponnambalam, UK, 1983 on Noolaham The… Read more »
Prabakaran’s Suthumalai Speech 1987
Speech by V. Prabakaran at the Suthumalai Amman temple, Jaffna, Sri Lanka, on August 4, 1987. Translation by Anton Balasingham in the second chapter of his book ‘War and Peace.’ ‘My Beloved and Esteemed People of Tamil Eelam, ‘Today, a turning point of immense significance has taken place in the history of our struggle. This… Read more »