Sri Lanka Tamils (so called to distinguish them from Indian Tamils) were 12.6% of the total population at the census of 1981, the last complete census to be taken, and were known as Ceylon Tamils from the middle of the nineteenth century to 1972 when the name of the island was officially changed to Sri Lanka. In the nineteenth century and before, they had been known as Malabars. The Portuguese, the Dutch and the British applied this designation until the British changed it in that century. As enumerated in 1981 this Tamil population was 1,871,535 distributed in the main as follows:

Jaffna District 792,246

Batticaloa District 234,348

Colombo District 165,952

Trincomalee District 86,743

Ampara District 78,315

Kandy District 55,675

Mullativu District 58,904

Vavuniya District 54,541

Mannar District 54,106

Gampaha District 45,807

It will be noticed that the SL Tamil population of Colombo was more than that of Trincomalee and Ampara taken together. Consequent to steady migration it increased from 4% of the total District population in 1946 (i.e. present Colombo and Gampaha Districts taken together) to 10% of the present Colombo District in 1981. Between 1981 and 1994 this population has increased by nearly 40% to become 11.5% of the District total. The Sinhala population has increased by only 15% which could be taken to be a natural increase. The phenomenal increase in the Tamil population is the result of sponsored colonization in and after 1989. .

The Tesavalama Regulation No.18 of 1806 gave legislative effect to "the Tesavalama or the customs of the Malabar inhabitants of the province of Jaffna as collected by order of Governor Simons in 1706…(original sec. 14 of the Regulation). The long title of the Regulation refers to the "district of Jafnapatam" The customs were collected by Claas Isaaks the Disava Of Jafnapatam who was Dutch ("Disava" was a Sinhala designation adopted by the Dutch). The "Malabar inhabitants of the province of Jaffna" are known today as "Jaffna Tamils" and form the majority of the Sri Lanka Tamils.

Sri Lanka Tamils are so called to distinguish them from the Indian Tamils who were first brought into the country in the nineteenth century for economic and political purposes and who were a floating population until the end of the Second World War.

Although Ceylon or Sri Lanka Tamils have been enumerated as a homogeneous racial or ethnic group since 1911, they are really a composite of several peoples speaking Tamil or its dialects. The best known amongst these are the Jaffna Tamils, Batticaloa Tamils, Mukkuwas (with their own personal laws known as the Mukkawa Law ), Paravars or Bharathas and Tamil speaking Vanni people.

Jaffna Tamils and Mukkuwas have been dealt with as distinct groups in K. Balasingham’s Laws of Ceylon (Vol.I Ch.XII pp. 136-173 and Ch. XIV pp. 174-182).

The origins of the Sri Lanka Tamils of today date, at the earliest, to the 13^th century A.C. and are not traceable to any prior period. As the Tamils have had no historical literature either in South India or in Sri Lanka it is to the Sinhalese sources we have to turn for evidence of any Tamil presence in the island prior to the 9^th century A.C. when the first Tamil inscriptions appeared. The Mahavansa the major historical chronicle of the Sinhalese was composed in the Pali language in the 5^th century; its material was drawn from earlier Sinhala sources. According to this work the island was invaded and the capital Anuradhapura occupied by usurpers from South India on three separate occasions from 237-225 B.C., 205-161 B.C. and 102-88 B.C. ; after this the island was undisturbed for over half a millenium. At this time the peninsula of Jaffnapatnam was occupied by the Sinhalese and there was no Tamil population there till after the 13^th century A.C. There is no trace now of any Tamils who might have settled down in the Anuradhapura area in the wake of these three usurpations or of the 27 year usurpation 500 years after the last or in the course of the Chola occupation in the eleventh century. Tamils who might have settled down either have been Sinhalised or have died out as Sinhalese in the dry zone did with the decline and destruction of the Sinhalese hydraulic civilization there.

The question of early Dravidian settlements in the island was exhaustively examined by a Tamil scholar Karthigesu Indrapala, sometime Professor of History of the University of Jaffna. He evaluated all available evidence in epigraphic, archaeological, literary and traditional sources in his 500 page doctoral thesis on Dravidian settlements in this country (University of London, 1965). Some of his principal conclusions are:

While Dravidian speakers had been resorting to the island as traders, mariners and soldiers " it is not until the ninth century that we get any definite evidence of any Dravidian (Tamil or otherwise) settlement in the island"(p.56).

There were no permanent Dravidian settlements till after the tenth century i.e. till the Chola invasion and 50 year occupation of the Rajarata (the Cholas were expelled by the Sinhalese under Vijayabahu I in 1070 A.C.).

Jaffnapatnam was Sinhalese for centuries till after the thirteenth century as evidenced by the Sinhalese place names still in use –there are over one thousand Sinhalese place names in the approximately 975 square miles of the peninsula.

(4) The history of Sri Lanka is a history of the Sinhalese till the 13^th century A.C.

Although there no permanent Tamil settlements till late in the island’s history, Sinhalese princes relied on South Indian mercenaries armies raised to make war on each other in the wars of succession in the 6^th and 7^th centuries A.C. There were also individual Tamils who were given high office by Sinhala kings and one of these was literally a kingmaker in the 7^th century. The principal aim of Tamils who invaded was plunder. There is not a single irrigation work constructed by Tamils and no works of art or literature produced by them ( other than a few Hindu temples and a dozen bronze sculptures dated to the 53 years of Chola occupation of the Rajarata in the 11^th century A.C.) in the whole course of Sri Lanka history.

Sir James Emerson Tennent (no Sinhalophile or Tamilophobe) has summed up the relative contributions of the Sinhalese and the Tamils in these words:

" Notwithstanding their numbers and their power, it is remarkable that the Malabars were never identified with any plan for promoting the prosperity and embellishment of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), or with any undertaking for the permanent improvement of the island. Unlike the Gangetic race (i.e. the Sinhalese), who were the earliest colonists, and with whom originated every project for enriching and adorning the country, the Malabars aspired not to beautify or enrich, but to impoverish and deface; -- and nothing can more strikingly bespeak the inferiority of the southern race (i.e. the Tamils) than the single fact that everything tending to exalt and to civilise, in the early condition of Ceylon, was introduced by the northern conquerors (i.e. the Sinhalese), while all that contributed to ruin and debase it is distinctly traceable to the presence and influence of the Malabars" (Ceylon, 2^nd. Ed., 1859, Vol. 1 p.401).

The Portuguese occupied Jaffnapatnam in 1619 and ruled till 1658 when they were ousted by the Dutch. The Portuguese historian de Queyroz reports that the male population of the peninsula was 20,000 in the time of the Portuguese but does not clearly state who the peoples were. Even before the time of the Portuguese there were Telugus who were soldiers. Almost the entire Paravar (Bharatha) population in Sri Lanka are descended from immigrants brought in by the Portuguese from the Coromandel Coast. The population of Jaffnapatnam had also a considerable number of Moors from South India and Keralas from the Malabar Coast in addition to the original Sinhala population.

It is significant that the people now called Tamil have invariably been called "Malabars" by all Western writers until the British changed the appellation to "Tamil" in the 19^th century. The Malabar coast is in Kerala and well outside Tamil Nadu. The origins of the modern Sri Lanka Tamils are further obscured by important provisions in the Tesavalama and its application only to "the Malabars of the Province of Jafnapatam". The provisions in this so-called customary law relating to the right of pre-emption by co-owners of land is from Muslim law and is no part of Tamil or Hindu law in India. This customary law of Jaffnapatnam Tamils has no application to Batticaloa and Trincomalee Tamils.

Although by the early nineteenth century the population of Jaffnapatnam was almost exclusively Tamil speaking, Sinhala had been in use, at least for important documents as late as the 16^th century. De Queyroz gives the text of the terms agreed to by the "king" of Jaffnapatnam with the Portuguese viceroy in 1561. These terms were written in Portuguese and Sinhala ( Conquest of Ceylon, tr. Fr. S.G. Perera, vol. 1, p. 371).

It appears that Tamils had been considered to be foreigners till the early nineteenth century. Robert Knox in his celebrated work on Sri Lanka, written after an enforced stay of nineteen years, writes: "But I am to speak only of the natural proper People of the Island , which they call Chingulays (Sinhalese)" (An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon, 2^nd ed., 1695, p. 187). He also states that the Malabars " are strangers and derive themselves from another Countrey…" (p.442).

Robert Percival, who served in the coastal districts including Jaffnapatnam for several years, wrote in 1803 as follows : " The inhabitants of Jaffna consist of a collection of various races. The greatest number are of Moorish extraction , and are divided into several tribes, known by the names of Lubbahs, Mopleys, Chittys, and Cholias; they are distinguished by wearing a little round cap on their close shaven heads. There is also a race of Malabars found here somewhat differing in their appearance from those on the continent. These tribes of foreign settlers greatly exceed in number the native Ceylonese in the district of Jaffna "(An Account Of The Island Of Ceylon, p.48). Bertolacci, who served for 16 years and retired at the end of 1813 as Controller General of Customs and Civil Auditor General, distinguishes between "Ceylonese" and "Malabars" in his book Ceylon published in 1817 ( e.g. Book III Part II, esp. p.180 ).

Dr. John Davy, younger brother of the famous Humphrey Davy, was on the medical staff of the British Army in Ceylon from August 1816 to February 1820. He published his An Account of the Interior of Ceylon and its Inhabitants with Travels in that Island in 1821. He states that Malabars and Moors are "foreigners naturalized" and that the former are confined principally to the northern and eastern maritime provinces.

The spread of Tamils to the eastern coast was later . Even today the Tamils in the Eastern Province are a coastal population as are the Muslims.

British officials have reported on the displacement of Sinhalese in the eastern districts which had been part of the Sinhala dominions till the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. In 1833 a British official found a Sinhala population in Gantale (now corrupted to Kantale) in Trincomalee District. In 1855 the Sinhala population had been replaced by "Malabars" who were ignorant of the traditions known earlier to the Sinhalese. "The gradual spread of the Tamils down the coasts, especially the Eastern, and the fact nowhere except in the Northern Province and in Tamankaduwa, do they form more than coast settlements, are both striking" states another report ; it adds that " Wherever the Tamil or Mohammedan comes to settle, the Sinhalese is driven back to the forest where he earns a precarious existence by chena (shifting) cultivation and by hunting" (F. D’A Vincent of the Indian Forest Service on Forest Administration of Ceylon, Sessional PaperXLIII of 1882, p.2 ). The displacement processes continued throughout the nineteenth century as the following report shows:

"Of this nature are matters concerning the group of Sinhalese villages in the north-west of the (Trincomalee) district lying in the western division of the Kaddukulam pattu.

This part of the district is inhabited by villagers of Kandyan (Sinhala) descent forming an outlying community which is, I fear, rapidly dying out or becoming effaced.

The district is most I interesting, being dotted over by numerous village tanks, some of which are restored and others abandoned .The villagers retain many of the primitive customs of the Kandyans, but they are rapidly becoming "Tamilised ", which is a great pity. They intermarry with Tamils, and many of them speak Tamil as well as they speak Sinhalese. Even the Government schoolmaster is Tamil, and only that language is taught in the only school, and unfortunately in some cases the Sinhalese villagers have been bought out by Tamils, who now own all the paddy lands of some villages. The Sinhalese have even given up their patronymics and have adopted the Tamil custom of prefixing the father’s name instead of the usual patronymic, and even the names of the villagers are assuming a Tamil dress.

This perhaps not to be wondered at when the interpreters of the court and the Kachcheri (the District administrative centre at Trincomalee), the petition drawers, and all through whom the villagers have access to Government officials can speak nothing but Tamil" (AdministrationReport For Trincomalee District for 1898, p.F7).

With the provision of education in English to Tamils of Jaffnapatnam from the early nineteenth century onwards and the political and economic suppression of the Sinhalese after the Rebellion of 1817-18 raised the Tamils to pre-eminence.. As late as 1921 the Sri Lanka Tamils who were 12.8 % of the total S.L. male population had secured 31.8 % in the professions while suppressed Kandyan Sinhalese who were 28% of the population had only 3.2% of the professional positions (data from census of 1921). The pre-eminence of the Tamils was such that by the beginning of the twentieth century they were not willing to be considered a minority and were insistent till 1948 that British colonial rule continue. When the latter agitation failed, the right to a Tamil state was invented in 1949 along with the formation, the same year, of the separatist DMK in South India. This is the basis of all Tamil political movements since 1949 and of the terrorism launched to enforce the claims.

The havoc wreaked on Sri Lanka by Tamil politicians and their military arm the Tigers is worse than that condemned by Emerson Tennent and the judgement of history destined to be harsher.