A civil war between Sri Lanka's government, dominated by the Sinhalese, the largest ethnic group, and the Sri Lanka Tamils, the largest ethnic minority, has persisted since 1983. Over 60,000 people have died in the conflict, which has torn the nation apart. The Tamil guerrilla group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), have demanded an independent state for the Tamil people. They have argued that the government has failed to treat the Tamils fairly by favoring the majority Sinhalese in government jobs, university admissions, police protection, and the placement ofdevelopment projects. The issue has been further complicated by the "colonization" of large numbers of Sinhalese in areas of the country that were almost exclusively populated by Tamils. Although there were government-led efforts to negotiate a settlement in 1995, the two sides have rarely negotiated, much less communicated, with each other.
The island democracy of Sri Lanka lies off the southern tip of India. Although culturally an extension of the Indian subcontinent, it has never been ruled by India through the nearly three thousand years of its recorded history. The small tear-shaped island is home to several large ethnic groups, despite being not much larger than the U. S. state of West Virginia.
Since receiving its independence from Great Britain in 1948, when it was known as Ceylon, Sri Lanka has struggled to unify its people within a democratic government modeled after that of Great Britain. During colonial rule, Sri Lankan ethnic differences were largely ignored. Once the British left the island, conflict between the island's two largest ethnic groups emerged and became an important part of political debate.
The conflict between the island's two largest ethnic groups escalated into open civil war in 1983 and has continued ever since. By the mid-1990's the Sri Lankan civil war was killing ten thousand people per year. Not only did it undermine the fragile democracy that continued to exist in the country but it also created a culture of violence that had begun to destroy the peaceful way of life that many Sri Lankans had grown to love and expect.
The largest ethnic group on the island is the Sinhalese, who constitute 74 percent of the population of nearly 20 million people. They speak the Sinhala language, which is part of the Indo-European family of languages that includes English, French, and the languages spoken in northern India. Most Sinhalese are Buddhists, although a significant number converted to Christianity during the colonial era. The Sinhalese constitute a majority in the southern and western parts of the country.
The second largest ethnic group is the Sri Lanka Tamils, who constitute 12.7 percent of the population and speak the Tamil language of southern India. Most Sri Lanka Tamils are Hindus, but some are Christians. Tamil is part of the Dravidian family of languages, which includes the aborigine language of Australia. Although there are Tamils in all the major cities of Sri Lanka, they are an overwhelming majority of the population in the northern part of the country and a plurality in the Eastern part of the country.
Related to the Sri Lanka Tamils are the Indian Tamils, descendants of Tamil speakers who were brought from southern India to Sri Lanka in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries first to work on the coffee plantations and later on the tea plantations. They constitute 5.5 percent of the population.
World History
