page_title: Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka
section_title: Religion
hierarchical_section_title: Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka / Society / Religion
caption_attribution_description: English: Modification for perspective and saturation of :Image:Hanuman20.jpg, released under continuation of GFDL license.
context_page_description: Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka are Tamil people of Indian origin in Sri Lanka. They are also known as Hill Country Tamils, Up-Country Tamils or simply Indian Tamils. They are partly descended from workers sent from South India to Sri Lanka in the 19th and 20th centuries to work in coffee, tea and rubber plantations. Some also migrated on their own as merchants and as other service providers. These Tamil speakers mostly live in the central highlands, also known as the Malayakam or Hill Country yet others are also found in major urban areas and in the Northern Province. Although they are all termed as Tamils today, some have Telugu and Malayalee origins as well as diverse South Indian caste origins. They are instrumental in the plantation sector economy of Sri Lanka. In general, socio-economically their standard of living is below that of the national average and they are described as one of the poorest and most neglected groups in Sri Lanka. In 1964 a large percentage were repatriated to India, but left a considerable number as stateless people. By the 1990s most of these had been given Sri Lankan citizenship. Most are Hindus with a minority of Christians and Muslims amongst them.
context_section_description: In general they use Hindu beliefs to guide their day-to-day lives. There are number of temples and places of worship for deities on estates and in villages, towns and other places within Sri Lanka to which they have migrated. When a place is decided to be settled, the settlers would institute, under a banyan or bo tree, a triangular shaped stone or figure of a deity, plant a weapon of a popularly worshipped god such as a spear, trident or sword and worshipped these. The main deities worshipped are, in order of popularity, the goddess Mariamman,  Murugan and his consorts, Valli and Theivanai, Pillayar, Siva, Parvathi, Vishnu and Laxmi, and the goddess of wisdom Saraswati.
  In 1981 about 90 percent of the Indian Tamils were Hindus. They have little contact with Buddhism, and they worship the Hindu pantheon of gods. Their religious myths, stories of saints, literature, and rituals are distinct from the cultural sources of the Sinhalese. Furthermore, a minority of the Indian Tamils- 7.6 percent are converts to Christianity, with their own places of worship and separate cultural lives. In this way, the large Tamil minority in Sri Lanka is effectively separated from the mainstream Sinhalese culture and is fragmented into two major groups with their own Christian minorities.
  The first known temple was built in Matale. It began as a stone an icon of the goddess Mariamman. At this very location where the worship of her began in 1820, the now-famous Matale Sri Muthumariamman Temple was built in 1852. The trading community of the Nattukotai Chettiars introduced the worship of Murugan in his form as Lord Kathiresan at Matale and was to subsequently build the Kathiresan temple at Matale. The annual festival of this temple is celebrated in the month of July. Devotees of the plantation sector walk from the tea estates and hometowns they live in to Kathirkamam, a place considered sacred by both Buddhists and Hindus, in the South of Sri Lanka, where Murugan is worshipped in the form of Skanda. Deepavali, Pongal and Tamil New Year are commonly celebrated as festivals.
caption: A temple to Hanuman near Nuwara Eliya
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