Bowdoin College Bowdoin Digital Commons Honors Projects Student Scholarship and Creative Work 2018 What Policies Cannot Express: An Examination of Sri Lanka’s Continuing Inability to Bridge the Sinhala-Tamil Ethnolinguistic Divide through National Policies and Programs Lillian Eckstein Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/honorsprojects Recommended Citation Eckstein, Lillian, "What Policies Cannot Express: An Examination of Sri Lanka’s Continuing Inability to Bridge the Sinhala-Tamil Ethnolinguistic Divide through National Policies and Programs" (2018). Honors Projects. 90. https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/honorsprojects/90 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship and Creative Work at Bowdoin Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Projects by an authorized administrator of Bowdoin Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. What Policies Cannot Express: An Examination of Sri Lanka’s Continuing Inability to Bridge the Sinhala-Tamil Ethnolinguistic Divide through National Policies and Programs An Honors Paper for the Department of Government and Legal Studies By Lillian Ann Eckstein Bowdoin College, 2018 ©2018 Lillian Ann Eckstein i For Ginger, whom we lost when I was first in Sri Lanka but has inspired every adventure since. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................... i INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................... 1 Question and Hypothesis ............................................................................................................ 5 Methodology ............................................................................................................................... 7 LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................................ 10 CHAPTER 1: Listening to the Past, Conversing in the Present; a Brief History and the Growth of Nationalism ................................................................................................................................. 1 Pre-Colonial Period ..................................................................................................................... 1 Colonial Period and Ethnic Conflict ........................................................................................... 4 Post-Independence and Ethnic Conflict ...................................................................................... 9 CHAPTER 2A: Language and Education, in Peace and in War .................................................. 17 History of Language and Education Policy in the Context of the War .................................... 17 Independence and War, 1948-2009 .......................................................................................... 21 Post-War, 2009-Present ............................................................................................................ 41 CHAPTER 2B: General Trends in University Admissions and Opinion, Post-Standardization .. 45 CHAPTER 2C: Admissions to University of Colombo, University of Peradeniya, and University of Jaffna as Case Studies .............................................................................................................. 54 University of Colombo ............................................................................................................. 56 University of Peradeniya........................................................................................................... 60 University of Jaffna................................................................................................................... 64 CHAPTER 2D: Public Opinion of the GoSL’s Policies in the Context of the University System 67 CHAPTER 3: Public Opinions on the Silence of All Policies ...................................................... 72 CHAPTER 3A: State of Democracy in South Asia (SDSA), 2005 and 2013 ................................ 74 CHAPTER 3B: National Values Survey, 2011 ............................................................................. 85 CHAPTER 3C: Interviews ............................................................................................................ 90 The Policies ............................................................................................................................... 91 The Tamil-Speaking Reality ..................................................................................................... 97 Ideals and the Future ................................................................................................................. 99 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................ 105 APPENDIX ................................................................................................................................. 111 WORKS CITED ........................................................................................................................... 114 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The completion of this thesis was possible only through the support of countless advisors, mentors, family, and friends who reminded me time and again to believe and trust in myself and the process. I am forever grateful to many, but the following are a few specific acknowledgments I wish to make: To Professor Ericka Albaugh, thank you for always pushing me to “find my voice,” for being a constant, inspiring role model, and for refusing to let me give up on myself and this project. To Professors Barbara Elias and Christopher Heurlin, thank you for your important contributions to, and support of my process, especially in challenging me to be more precise in my arguments and for assistance with my data analyses. Additionally, thank you to Professor Andrew Rudalevige for coordinating all aspects of the honors process for the Government and Legal Studies Department, and to Lynne Atkinson for her ongoing enthusiasm and necessary administrative support. To Mom and Dad, thank you for instilling in me the values of hard work and determination that you two model every day, the encouragement even when I did not know I needed it, and reminding me of the importance of challenges in all aspects of life. To Nathan, thank you for always being my strongest believer and most honest critic. Your love carried me through. To my dearest friends, thank you for the quad laps, the treks up those six flights of stairs to the stacks, and the surprise visits. Especially to my friends who have also worked tirelessly to complete projects in all Bowdoin departments, your dedication and achievements were constant inspirations and your companionship on this wild ride has meant the world. I could not have done it without any of you. Finally, and with great importance, I express deepest appreciation to the endless numbers of interview subjects, strangers, and friends in Sri Lanka who acted with immense generosity, showed me exceptional kindness, and were endlessly welcoming of me into their professional and personal lives. A special thanks to my host family for inspiring my research and accepting me from the first day as part of the family in Peradeniya. This project would not have been possible without the support of the Peter J. Grua and Mary G. O’Connell Research Award and the Bowdoin College Office of Student Fellowships and Research, which generously provided me the opportunity to return to Sri Lanka to conduct critical primary research and re-center my work. Thank you. i INTRODUCTION In the Sinhala lexicon, the words for “opposition” (ediriya), “obstinate” (murandu), “fight” (poraya), and “revenge” (paliya) are naturalized and derived from the modern Tamil language.1 They are considered to be “loanwords,” otherwise known as “words which are adopted or borrowed, usually with little modification, from another language.”2 According to Sinhala tradition, the Sinhalese language, of the Indo-Aryan language family and the Tamil language, of the Dravidian language family, are thought to have first interacted sometime after 544 BCE, the year when Buddha’s followers arrived to the island – now known as Sri Lanka – on the southeastern tip of India.3 With separate alphabets, different etymological lineages, and little relation to international languages like Portuguese, Dutch, or English, both Sinhala and Tamil proved challenging to learn, both for the other linguistic community and the colonial powers of Portugal, the Netherlands, and England. Thus, the words that were “loaned” to the Sinhala from the Tamil language are more likely related to war, conflict, and division. These words ultimately speak to the storied relationship between these two languages in Sri Lanka: they have more often been juxtaposed in opposition to each other than in harmony, used to demonstrate differences rather than similarities, and cited as reasons of competition, conflict, and ongoing struggles between Sri Lanka’s ethnolinguistic communities. Historian K.M. de Silva argues that three matters of identity have been the most common causes of conflict, unrest, and violence in Sri Lanka—religion, ethnicity, and language. 4 These 1 Tamil Language Lists: Tamil Loanwords in Sinhala, List of English Words of Tamil Origin, Loan Words