Tamil Eelam

Tamil Eelam (Tamil: தமிழீழம், tamiḻ īḻam; generally rendered outside Tamil-speaking areas as தமிழ் ஈழம்) is a proposed independent state that many Tamils in Sri Lanka and the Eelam Tamil diaspora aspire to create in the north and east of Sri Lanka. Large sections of the North-East were under de facto control of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for most of the 1990s–2000s during the Sri Lankan Civil War. Tamil Eelam, although encompassing the traditional homelands of Eelam Tamils, does not have official status or recognition by world states. The name is derived from the ancient Tamil name for Sri Lanka, Eelam. In 1956, the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK), the most dominant Tamil political party in Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon), lobbied for a united state that would give the minority Tamils and majority Sinhalese equal rights, including recognition of two official languages—Tamil and Sinhala—and considerable autonomy for the Tamil regions of the country. However, the Official Language Act No. 33 of 1956, more simply known as the Sinhala Only Act, was passed in the Sri Lankan Parliament in 1956. The act replaced English as the official language of Sri Lanka with Sinhala; due to the lack of official recognition of the Tamil language, the act was widely viewed by Tamils as a sign of the Sri Lankan state's ambition of establishing a Sinhala–Buddhist nation state. Though both the Bandaranaike–Chelvanayakam Pact and the Senanayake-Chelvanayakam Pact were signed, they were not approved by the Sinhalese dominated Sri Lankan Parliament in 1957 and 1965, respectively. The failure of the Sri Lankan Parliament to implement these agreements caused further disillusionment and isolation among Tamils. In the 1970 Sri Lankan parliamentary election, the United Front led by Sirimavo Bandaranaike came to power. This new Sri Lankan government adopted two new policies that were considered discriminatory by the Tamil people; the government introduced a policy of standardisation to regulate university admissions, which was interpreted as a scheme to reduce the intake of Tamil and other minority students into the Sri Lankan educational system. A similar policy was later adopted for employment in the public sector that caused less than 10 percent of civil service jobs to be available for Tamil speakers. According to historian K. M. de Silva, the system of standardisation of marks (or grades) required the Tamil students to achieve higher marks than Sinhalese students to gain entrance into university. Under the United Front's constitution during the early 1970s, Tamil students sought ways to form a Tamil independent state where the rights and freedoms of the Tamils could be protected and nurtured. By 1975, all Tamil political parties merged and became known as the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), which was led by prominent Tamil politician S. J. V. Chelvanayakam. In 1976, the first national convention of the TULF was held at Vaddukoddai, where the party adopted a unanimous resolution called the Vaddukodai Resolution. This resolution charged that the Sri Lankan Government had used its power to "deprive the Tamil nation of its territory, language, citizenship, economic life, opportunities of employment and education thereby destroying all the attributes of nationhood of the Tamil people." The resolution further called for the "Free, Sovereign, Secular Socialist State of Tamil Eelam".