The Arrogation of Being Tamil and Other Campaigns Against Caste Discrimination in Jaffna, 1927–1957

Abstract

For decades, scholars have interpreted twentieth-century Sri Lankan Tamil history through the prism of sovereignty. From calls for communal representation in the early decades of the century, to the attempt to establish Tamil Eelam at its close, the Sri Lankan Tamil effort to chart a self-directed political destiny is often considered a defining feature of the community’s twentieth century story. Less discussed is another question that consumed Ceylon Tamil politicians, activists, and the island’s reading public between the 1920s and the 1950s: should the so-called “depressed classes,” or roughly a quarter of Tamil-speakers in the island’s north and east, enjoy the same rights and privileges of their neighbors? Focusing on four campaigns that shaped these debates—equality of Tamil identity, equality in schools, equality in death, and equality in political representation—I argue that a multi-faceted and, at times, internally divided movement against caste discrimination operated over the four decades preceding the well-known Marxist-led temple and cafe entry protests of the late 1960s. Based on the family archives of key activists, police and other colonial records, and both oral and published accounts in Tamil and English, this article considers the larger circumstances that made landmark civil rights accomplishments possible, including the appointment of the island’s first Minority Tamil legislator in 1947 and the passing of anti-caste discrimination legislation in 1957. Drawing insights from new work in Critical Caste Studies, the article reveals how a diverse, multi-caste, and multi-national coalition of Hindus, Christians, and Buddhists united to disrupt widespread discrimination decades before the rise of Tamil militancy. In so doing, this article suggests the addition of a second century-defining theme in twentieth-century Sri Lankan Tamil history: caste struggle.