Tag: sri lankan democracy

The origins of the linguistic disenfranchisement of the Tamils owed partly to the appeasement of the Buddhist clergy, which is nearly exclusively Sinhala. It not only caused the alienation of the Tamil-speaking population but led to the formation of the LTTE, a terrorist organisation, and a war. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were finally vanquished, but it took over two-and-a-half decades for the Sri Lankan state to realize this. In the meanwhile, there was an exodus of Tamils, the better-off leaving for the West and, those that could escape, heading for Madras. With the Tamils having had a big presence within the professions, the country experienced a loss of experience in most spheres. The impact of a loss of technical expertise on an economy is slow and infrequently i...