I see lot of hate messages here. People in India dont really understand the problem in SL. I am giving a brief synopsis. After Sri Lanka became independant in the 50's, the budhist monks there became prominent in public life. Tamils were the affluent section of the society whereas the majority sinhalese were the labour class. This infuriated the Budhist monks and the majority sinhala people. They created reservations for the sinhalese in all colleges, schools, govt jobs, army, police etc. They also imposed sanctions on trade in the city of Jaffna. Both Jaffna and Colombo at one point were financial hub of Sri Lanka.
Every sinhalese hates tamils to the extent they want all tamils to leave the nation. Buddhist monks are against the very simple teching of Buddha. All his life Buddha thought only peace.
Sinhalese are actually people who migrated from india in early BC from Bengal, Orissa and Bihar. Sinhalese is very similiar to Sanskrit. SL Tamils are people who migrated from TN since the early BC and some few hundred years back during the British rule. Hence both are not orginal inhabitants of the island. Why should they both quarrel in the name of religion and language. IF there was equal rights for the groups there would have never been this bloody war for 30 yrs
RE:Ethnic war: Lessons can be learnt for India
by ramabhadranS on Jul 31, 2008 04:31 PM Permalink
I agree with most of what you say.Buddhist monks have forgotten what Buddha preached.But sinhalese do not hate tamilians and do not want them to leave the nation. Most of them want tamilians to be united with them and be sri lanka citizens without breaking the country into pieces.That's why they hate LTTE and not tamilians. Mahinda rajapaksa Govt does not help to solve this problem and believes in war solution which is totally wrong. The govt does not represent all sinhala people because almost 50% of the people voted against Rajapakse in the election.
