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www.tamilarangam.netEastern Province Tamils Protest5 August 1985The Honourable Prime Minister of IndiaNew DelhiIndiaHonourable Prime MinisterWe are reliably informed that in an informalmeeting certain prominent Sri Lanka Tamilsheld with Mr Romesh Bhandari duringhis recent visit to U.K. he has categoricallydenied that the Tamils have any rightwhatever to the Eastern Province.• We who come from East Sri Lanka arevery pained and saddened at the attitudeof Mr Bhandari. We wonder if that is alsothe attitude of the Government of India.But you are on record as having statedthe contrary in a press conference inMadras on the 15th of July 85; you wereasked :Can't Sri Lanka Tamils ask for moreautonomy than what prevails in India?Your answer is:No. I have not said that the Tamilscannot ask for it. What I said was wewill never support the stand whichasks for nore than what prevails inIndia.Indeed what prevails in India as lived andexperienced by the millions of India today,with their varied cultures and customsand religions as well from the Himalayasin the North to Cape Comorin in the Southis what shaped them namely, their language.What prevails in India today is the demarkationof their huge country on linguisticbasis carved into flourishing linguisticStates.But this has been feasible and practicableonly because the Government of India atthe Centre is secular, just and non-partisan.Unfortunately the theory and practice ofthe Governments of Sri Lanka at the Centrehas been quite the opposite. For the lastthirtyfive years since Independence, thesuccessive Sinhala Governments havebeen thinking and behaving with onenation — one language — one religiontheory of Sinhala Buddhist Sri Lanka only.Further, we Tamils have been relegatedto a second class citizenry and made tofeel a subject-race by the various acts ofcommission and ommission by the SinhalaGovernments.As Tamils we have not had any activevoice when the Sinhala Governmentschanged the constitution of the countryon two occasions, once by the UnitedLeft Front composed of the Sri LankaFreedom Party, the Lanka Sama SangaParty and the Communist Party in 1972.On the second occasion it was under theleadership of the incumbent President ofSri Lanka and the leader of the UnitedNational Party in 1978.That we are a subject race is made amplyevident by the brutal and inhuman behaviourof the security forces serving in the Northand the East. Under cover of supervisinglaw and order situation, our Tamil housesand hearths have been desecrated bythem. They indulge in burning of Tamilproperties and people, raping our Tamilmothers and sisters and daughters, torturingand killing our male youths and youthsarrested in thousands by them havedisappeared. Indeed we are made asubject-race under the aegis of Sinhala— Buddhist expansionism.It is not presumptious on my part to suggestthat a subject-race has also the right toself-determination.But you have stated categorically that"we will never support the stand whichasks for more than what prevails in India".We, the Sri Lanka Tamils of the EasternProvince ask just that basic that thetraditional Tamil speaking Eastern Provincewhich we consider our traditional TamilHomeland be proposed, discussed andaccepted as forming one single linguisticunit together with the traditional TamilHomeland of the North.The Eastern Province of Sri Lanka hasalways been a traditional Tamil Homelandof Sri Lanka Tamils from very ancienttimes. The chiefs who belonged to theKandyan Kingdom and whose rule andreign extended even to the Trincomaleeand Batticaloa Districts of the EasternProvince accept the fact that "the Northernand Eastern Provinces in which the TamilsPredominate..."Subsequently in the last thirtyfive yearssince Independence the Tamil ethnicityof the Eastern Province has been erodedand dwindled by deliberate and calculatedcolonisation of the Eastern Province bySinhala majority race.At the moment statistically the Tamils arestill the majority in the Eastern Province.We have kept the memory and our claimalive to the Eastern Province being ourTraditional Tamil Homeland.We have a genuine fear that the traditionalTamil Homeland of the Eastern Provincewill be swamped by the majority racewith another wave of colonisation underthe Mathuru Oya settlement being plottedin the North of Batticaloa District. Earlierit was Gal-Ova valley settlement in theSouth of Batticaloa District. With thisnew wave of colonisation the fear loomslarge in our minds of what is in store forus Tamils of the Eastern Province onceagain at the hands of the contemplatedcolonists as much as the discriminationsand injustice at the hands of the Sinhalagovernments and at the hands of barbaricsecurity personnel. ^.18jkpo;j; Njrpa Mtzr; Rtbfs;