Trilingual inscription from Sri Lanka

[Venkatraman Iyer]

>It is also the case that Sinhalese had legitimate grievances as
>regards the Tamils in the late colonial period, such as the import of large
>numbers of foreign workers and the privileging
>of the more highly educated Tamils in government service. As so often
>happens, this led to excesses in the opposite direction after independence.

  British colonial regime was responsible for importing Indian
  Tamils or to place Jaffna Tamils in Govt. jobs; In India also,
  this happened. Eg., large portion of the Army manned by
  Sikhs and in the Madras Presidency, most of the decent and high
  paying jobs going to the Brahmins. But compare the
  'ethnic cleansing' efforts in Lanka to that in Punjab. No doubt,
  the Dravidian movement was started to place a quota system in
  modern education  to give all castes a chance in the professions.
  One negative result of this Dravidian movement was that
  Sanskrit scholarship suffered a setback and Tamil scholarship
  is not doing great either. Still, the 'ethnic cleansing'
  in Lanka is an orders of magnitude higher than wrongdoings in
  India.

  V. Iyer

  PS: Note that this is not a justification for Indian killings
  either.




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