page_title: Sri Lankan Tamils
section_title: Politics
hierarchical_section_title: Sri Lankan Tamils / Politics
caption_attribution_description: English: A Hindu Gentleman of North Ceylon (p.72, July 1859, XVI)
context_page_description: Sri Lankan Tamils, also known as Eelam Tamils, Ceylon Tamils or simply Tamils, are members of the Tamil ethnic group native to the South Asian island state of Sri Lanka. Today, they constitute a majority in the Northern Province, live in significant numbers in the Eastern Province and are in the minority throughout the rest of the country. 70% of Sri Lankan Tamils in Sri Lanka live in the Northern and Eastern provinces.
  Modern Sri Lankan Tamils descend from residents of the Jaffna Kingdom, a former kingdom in the north of Sri Lanka and Vannimai chieftaincies from the east. According to the anthropological and archaeological evidence, Sri Lankan Tamils have a very long history in Sri Lanka and have lived on the island since at least around the 2nd century BCE.
  Although Sri Lankan Tamils are culturally and linguistically distinct, genetic studies indicate that they are closely related to the Sinhalese ethnic group in the island. The Sri Lankan Tamils are mostly Hindus with a significant Christian population. Sri Lankan Tamil literature on topics including religion and the sciences flourished during the medieval period in the court of the Jaffna Kingdom.
context_section_description: Sri Lanka became an independent nation in 1948. Since independence, the political relationship between Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamil community has been strained. Sri Lanka has been unable to contain its ethnic violence as it escalated from sporadic terrorism to mob violence, and finally to civil war. The Sri Lankan Civil War has several underlying causes: the ways in which modern ethnic identities have been made and remade since the colonial period, rhetorical wars over archaeological sites and place name etymologies, and the political use of the national past. The civil war resulted in the death of at least 100,000 people and, according to human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch, the forced disappearance of thousands of others (see White van abductions in Sri Lanka). Since 1983, Sri Lanka has also witnessed massive civilian displacements of more than a million people, with eighty percent of them being Sri Lankan Tamils.
caption: A Hindu Gentleman of North Ceylon (1859)[151]
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