Tamil complaints on the Sri Lankan flag, 50% share to 12%

[quote="Anonymouse"]Yes I do, eventhough I haven't really studied the info given below. I assume the CIA did some fact checking (otherwise they should be ashamed of themselves for publishing info without knowing the facts)

The [b]CIA factbook[/b] states this (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/print/ce.html)

----------------------------------------------
The Sinhalese arrived in Sri Lanka late in the 6th century B.C., probably from northern India. Buddhism was introduced beginning in about the mid-third century B.C., and a great civilization developed at the cities of Anuradhapura (kingdom from circa 200 B.C. to circa A.D. 1000) and Polonnaruwa (from about 1070 to 1200). In the 14th century, a south Indian dynasty seized power in the north and established a Tamil kingdom
--------------------------------------------

I found this website really intresting : [b]http://countrystudies.us/sri-lanka/[/b]

The website states on their homepage:

----------------------------------------
This website contains the on-line versions of books previously published in hard copy by the [b]Federal Research Division [/b]of the Library of Congress as part of the Country Studies/Area Handbook Series sponsored by the U.S. Department of the Army between 1986 and 1998. Each study offers a comprehensive description and analysis of the country or region's historical setting, geography, society, economy, political system, and foreign policy.
-------------------------------------

And reading their information on Sri Lanka I can say that they have enough arguments which makes to tend to believe the info.

[b]infoplease.com [/b]states this
------------------------------------------------
Indo-Aryan emigration from India in the 5th century B.C. came to form the largest ethnic group on Sri Lanka today, the Sinhalese. Tamils, the second-largest ethnic group on the island, were originally from the Tamil region of India and emigrated between the 3rd century B.C. and A.D. 1200. Until colonial powers controlled Ceylon (the country's name until 1972).
------------------------------------------------

Like I said, eventhough I haven't read the books mentioned on these websites, I find it acceptable to believe the bigger picture they sketch. And the bigger picture is: The Sinhalase came way earlier (more than 1000 years earlier) from India to Sri Lanka than the Tamils. So they had more time to start and expand their society than the Tamils had, hence the Sinhalase majority in Sri Lanka[/quote]
[b]Thank you, for sharing the info with me.

From what I understand after reading these articles;

Sinhalese came to this island before the tamils and developed an idependant civilaisation with a rich culture which is closely related to that of the Indian sub continent.
The tamils landed in the island, 1000 or more years after, and they are very much looked up to their origin which is Tamilnadu for their developement in this island.
By then tamil language is already developed to have its own scripts.

Therefore, the sinhalese got a lead of 1000 or more years surviving in this island than the tamils, which caused them to claim the ethnic majority status.

I also read, there have been constant fights between the two nations which pushed the sinhalese mostly to the south. Though the population density of tamils was not as high as in the sinhalese south, tamils have occupied the land which is bigger, proportionally to its own population.

Some historians argue the arrival of portugese, prevented from tamils overrunning the sinhalese in the south which would have merged the sinhalese race with the tamils eventually.

What I would really like to know is the motives of the sinhalese chiefs those served the last King, as to why they betrayed the the kingdom giving the power to the invaders, the British?

What would be the reason behind it?

May be it is the greed for power

[u]OR[/u]

May be they have come to a realisation that this is the only way left for the survival of the Sinhalese race.(the life after the Protugese and the Dutch occupation.)
If that is the case, the chiefs are saviours to the sinhalese not the traitors as they were portrayed by the some.

Whichever the thoeries are correct, there is one thing which is a fact.
Sinhalese represent 74%
Tamils represent 18% in 1981, though I read this number is vastly smaller today due to migration of tamils and the sacrifices made to the tamil cause.
Muslims represent 7% in 1981, though this number is on the rise presently. Perhaps this is the reason the muslims are becoming a much louder voice in SriLanka today, making the tamils to rethink their stratagies.
The other minorities make up the rest.

This is the history of this island which was established as a soverign state, after its independance from the British.

There is one simple questin still remains to be answered.

How it is possible to justify the argument that a less than 18% of population can occupy, more than 30% of land, just because that race used to govern that piece of land many, many years ago.

[color=darkred]We either follow the timeine as of todays

[u]OR[/u]

the timeline of King Parakrama Bahu VI,

[u]OR[/u]

The timeline of at the onset of the European period in Sri Lanka in the sixteenth century.[/color]

All of this boils down to one thing.

SURVIVAL.

That's what we read in the history.
That's what they will read in the future as history.
All those who suggests "The Exception to Rules", that is against the todays norms, are also talking about this survival.

The sinhalese has survived for many centuries as the history suggests, and still managed to remain as the majority, there is no doubt in my mind they will remain in the majority in this island for the centuries to come.
For some it will be a tough bullet to bite.

What is remaining to be done is to nuture an atmosphere where every Sri lankan is a citizen with pride and rights equally, regardless of the race.[/b]

[quote="Anonymouse"][quote="Anonymouse"][quote="victorragunath"]
Prince Vijaya and his party of several hundred people brought the Sinhala language to Sri Lanka from India around 500 BC.
[/quote]

[quote="Zulu"]
1). Both sinhalese and the SriLankan Tamils came from India.

But, I still do not understand, why the sinhalese are the ethnic majority in this island until today?
[/quote]

Yes, to my understanding the Tamils came more than 1000 years later to Sri Lanka than the Sinhalase. So the Sinhalase had more than 1000 years time to expand their society in Sri Lanka when you compare them with the Tamils, and it seems they still hold that advantage till today.[/quote]

more than 1000 years [b]extra time[/b] that is.[/quote]
Thank you kindly,

Do you have anything to support this?

OR

As you wrote, this is purely your understanding? (coming from tribal knowledge?)

[quote="victorragunath"]
Prince Vijaya and his party of several hundred people brought the Sinhala language to Sri Lanka from India around 500 BC.
[/quote]

[quote="Zulu"]
1). Both sinhalese and the SriLankan Tamils came from India.

But, I still do not understand, why the sinhalese are the ethnic majority in this island until today?
[/quote]

Yes, to my understanding the Tamils came more than 1000 years later to Sri Lanka than the Sinhalase. So the Sinhalase had more than 1000 years time to expand their society in Sri Lanka when you compare them with the Tamils, and it seems they still hold that advantage till today.

[quote="victorragunath"]
[b]Tamil[/b] is a classical language and one of the major languages of the Dravidian language family. Spoken predominantly by Tamils in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Singapore, it has smaller communities of speakers in many other countries. As of 1996, it was the [b]eighteenth most spoken [/b]language, with over 74 million speakers worldwide

Tamil is one of the [b]few living classical languages [/b]and has an unbroken literary tradition of over two millennia. Preliminary results from archaelogical excavations in 2005 suggest that the oldest inscriptions in Tamil may date atleast to around [b]500 BC[/b].( Hindu Feb 17, 2005)

The origins of Tamil, like the other Dravidian languages, but unlike most of the other established literary languages of India, are independent of Sanskrit. Tamil has the oldest literature amongst the Dravidian languages

Proto-Dravidian is thought to have differentiated into Proto-North Dravidian, Proto-Central Dravidian and Proto-South Dravidian around [b]1500 BC[/b], although some linguists have argued that the degree of differentiation between the sub-families points to an earlier split.

[b]Sinhala[/b] is the language spoken by the Sinhalese, the largest ethnic group of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon). It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European family of languages. The language of the Maldives, Dhivehi, is closely related to Sinhala. Prince Vijaya and his party of several hundred people brought the Sinhala language to Sri Lanka from India around 500 BC. Stone inscriptions as well as written texts such as the Mahavamsa, a history of the kings of Sri Lanka going back to almost the Lord Buddha's time which is 5BC. The Sinhala script evolved from the ancient Brahmi script, which was introduced to the island in the 6th century BC[/quote]

[quote]archaelogical excavations in 2005 suggest that the oldest inscriptions in Tamil may date atleast to around [b]500 BC[/b].( Hindu Feb 17, 2005)[/quote]

[quote]Prince Vijaya and his party of several hundred people brought the Sinhala language to Sri Lanka from India around 500 BC. [/quote]

[b]Dr. Ragunathan,

If we to take the above seriously, it is safe to conclude the folowing,

1). Both sinhalese and the SriLankan Tamils came from India.

2). Tamil is a classical language and one of the major languages of the Dravidian language family, while Sinhala was brougt to the island and then developed independantly by the mixture of Veddas, Dravidians and Aryans which we now call Sinhalese.

3). Sinhala language was brought to Sri Lanka from India around 500 BC by the prince Vijaya and the gang.
And that is about the same time the oldest inscriptions in Tamil may have been made.(date atleast to around 500 BC).

Thanks for the info provided though it will be extremely difficult to confirm this information.
As a man of science, I trust you will agree with me on this.

But, I still do not understand, why the sinhalese are the ethnic majority in this island until today?[/b]

Zulu [i]M.Sc.(engineering)[/i]

Thanks for your reply,

Read the essay from Stanford as well,they too discuss about Iran,Myanmar,Tibet,India,Thailand and Pakistan.Still couldn't find anything to corraborate the statement. my initial question.

Anyway think I should take the learned professional's word in this instance and close the matter.

[b]To whom it may concern,[/b]

In science, we need one thread and we search for answers. In arts we create things from immagination. I was talking science and not arts. The following texts are given in full since some readers asked for it. (from the text words, can find the source) Rebecca Caan's article is one of the many clue.

[b]Source One[/b]

[b]A 2003 Stanford study analyzing the origins of various South Asian populations (including 40 Sinhalese and over 90 Tamils from Sri Lanka)[/b] found that most of the population of the island and India in general:
Taken together, these results show that Indian tribal and caste populations derive largely from the same genetic heritage of Pleistocene southern and western Asians and have received limited gene flow from external regions since the Holocene.

[b]Source two[/b]

Results

Four new Indian-specific haplogroup M sub-clades were defined. These, in combination with two previously described haplogroups, encompass approximately one third of the haplogroup M mtDNAs in India. Their phylogeography and spread among different linguistic phyla and social strata was investigated in detail. Furthermore, the analysis of the Iranian mtDNA pool revealed patterns of limited reciprocal gene flow between Iran and the Indian sub-continent and allowed the identification of different assemblies of shared mtDNA sub-clades.

Conclusions

Since the initial peopling of South and West Asia by anatomically modern humans, when this region may well have provided the initial settlers who colonized much of the rest of Eurasia, the gene flow in and out of India of the maternally transmitted mtDNA has been surprisingly limited. Specifically, our analysis of the mtDNA haplogroups, which are shared between Indian and Iranian populations and exhibit coalescence ages corresponding to around the early Upper Paleolithic, indicates that they are present in India largely as Indian-specific sub-lineages. In contrast, other ancient Indian-specific variants of M and R are very rare outside the sub-continent.

Background

Two mtDNA macro-haplogroups (M and N) that arose from the African haplogroup L3 encompass virtually all mtDNAs outside Africa [1-4]. The phylogenetic node N (including R) has spread its branches all over Eurasia, in contrast to haplogroup M, which is found in Eastern Eurasia but is virtually absent in Europe. The numerous branches of N are, however, generally segregated to either the eastern (e.g. A, B [5], Y [6], R9 [7] or western (e.g. N1 [8,9], N2 (comprising of W and its sister-clade identified by [10]), TJ, HV, U [11]) Eurasian-specific pools.
The majority of Indian mtDNAs belong to macro-haplogroup M [8,12-21]. While the topology of the M sub-haplogroups that are common in mainland East Asia (M7, M8 (including C, Z), M9 (including E), D, G [7,22,23]) and in Africa (M1 [24]) is established in detail, the internal haplogroup structure of M in India has remained largely undefined. We have previously demonstrated that transitions at nps. 477G, 1780, 8502 and 16319 designate Indian-specific haplogroup M2, the most frequent M clade in India [15]. Another Indian-specific M clade supported by HVS-I variation as well as coding region markers, is M6 [15]. Haplogroups M3, M4 and M5 have been discriminated preliminarily by their characteristic HVS-I mutations [19], but since their defining positions, 16126, 16311, and 16129, respectively, are phylogenetically unstable [25,26], it is unlikely that the proposed haplogroups are monophyletic. Most numerous sub-groups of macro-haplogroup N in India are the Indian-specific variants of the phylogenetic node R including haplogroups R5, R6, U2(a, b, c) [8,13,27].
The overwhelming majority of the Iranian mtDNAs have been shown to lie in the West Eurasian domain of the global human mtDNA pool [27,28]. Here we focus on the analysis of mtDNA lineages that are shared between Indians and Iranians and bear signals of pre-Holocene expansion in the region.
India congregates four linguistic domains (Indo-European, Dravidic, Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto-Burman) that occupy non-random spheres of the geographic distribution of its populations. The majority of the recent studies based on mtDNA variation have, in contrast to some [21], provided evidence that linguistic groups of India do not represent genetically homogeneous units and are not, therefore, traceable to different immigration waves from distinct sources [8,13,19]. The complexity that arises in defining populations and groups of populations in India based on genetic and cultural criteria has been recently demonstrated in South Indian tribal and caste populations. [b]The combined data from mtDNA, Y-chromosome and autosomal genes indicated that the tribes and castes derive largely from the same genetic heritage of Late Pleistocene southern and southwestern Asians, and have received limited gene flow from external sources since the Holocene [/b][15]. Similar results were obtained by Cordaux et al. [29], who demonstrated that caste and tribal groups exhibit similar levels of molecular variance. However, genetic distances indicated that the Tibeto-Burman speaking tribal populations (from eastern India) were more closely related to East Asians than to other Indians [29]. This is consistent with an earlier suggestion placing the origin of these tribal groups east of India – in Tibet and Myanmar [30].
In this study, we have analyzed the mtDNA variation in a sample of 796 Indians and 436 Iranians (Table 1), and combined the results with previously published data from the same geographic area. We also compared the mtDNA variation in India and Iran with that of Europe, China, and Thailand. The overall aim was to improve our understanding of the origins and composition of the Indian and Iranian gene pools and to determine the nature and the extent of gene flow between these regions. Through the analyses of the genetic variation of extant Southwest and South Asian populations we took an endeavor to envisage the exodus of anatomically modern humans from Africa.

[b]Source three (about Kuveni)[/b]

A former Additional Secretary, Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, Sunil Sarath Perera in his talk on 'The Poetry of the Veddas' on Saturday, 18 October 2003, at Suvisuddharama Hall, Wellawatte, at a public meeting sponsored by the Colombo South Research Circle revealed that the Vedda lullaby is probably the oldest known lullaby of the world. The tradition is that Kuveni the Yakkha Queen of Vijaya sang this lullaby to lull the children to sleep.

We, Tamils, stopped raising that flag in 1972, 33 years ago
We, Tamils, stopped singing SL national anthom in 1972

We do respect that flag as Sri Lanka flag. We do not consider that as ours. It is the reality.

[quote]On this flag issue consider also this point. There are 191 flags flying at the UN. There are 75 million Tamils in the world, including 55 million in Tamil Nadu, the only true homeland of the Tamils. Dr. Ragunathan. I am sure, would be proud to know, that among all these there is only one flag that has given the Tamils a place of honour and dignity: the Sri Lankan flag. [/quote]

I am not sure, out of this 191 flags, how many of them are based on the ethnicity of the people of the country.

If someone look at this country's history since independence. Yes, a change on the flag is required. The strong looking lion in the middle with the sword must be replaced with Monk's bowl.

By the way, is that country called Ceylon or Sri Lanka or Shri Lanaka now?
What is the Time in Sri Lanka now. Is it half an early or half an hour late? Probably they have to set the clock back to 1948 and give it a try one more time.

As far as Language concerned, Sanskrit and Palli are some of the EURO-ASIAN language and Tamil is the Diravidan Language of pre-historic time.

As far as further posting concerned, I will refrain at least until after April 15, as I have a project to do. I will try an submit an article if I have enough info.

Rest assured.

[quote="victorragunath"][b]The origin of Sinahala [/b]

Island was home to aboriginal populations including the Veddahs and later Dravidian peoples who largely merged with an invading Indo-Aryan population of indeterminate size.

[b]some early genetic tests (Y-chromosome and MtDNA only) show that the majority of the Sinhalese genetically cluster with both the Tamils and other Indic populations[/b].

[b]Naga[/b] means snake. Nagas are a race of supernatural beings usually depicted with both snake and human. Only Diravidans and Hindus worship the snake. Hence they are Diravidans (the Diravidan Language existed was Tamil and hence they are Tamilians)

[b]Devas[/b] are the relegious people. The term deva is from sanskrit. They are again hindu devotees.

Ravana (Iravana) is the King of [b]Raksha[/b]. He is not only a Tamil but also a Hindu devotee.

[b]Yaksha [/b] are class of nature ghosts or demons. Male yakshas are portrayed either as fearsome warriors (their affliation is not clear) pridictably they are the Vedas.

Veddas are hunter-gatherers and have lived in their tropical forest environment for the past 18,000 years. DNA studies suggest that Veddas (also called Wanniyala-Aetto ) may have been the forefathers of the Sinhalese before the Aryan civilization arrived. Their language, usually referred to as Veddah, is closely related to Sinhala, although much of its vocabulary can not be traced to Sinhala and may be from the language they spoke before they adopted the language of the Indo-Aryans who settled in the Island . There are also communities of Wanniyala-Aetto(Veddas) who speak Tamil mostly in the East.

Based on the above, the Island was inhabited by Diravidans who spoke Tamil or Veddas who spoke Veddah. Palli and Sanskirit are all came with northern (Aryan) invasion.

Palli is one of the original language from North. In fact Mahavamsa was written in Palli.

[b]The Sinhalese are a race originated from mixture of Veddas (20,000 Sinhalese in Sri Lanka claim that they have some trace of Vedda blood), Dravidans and Aryans [/b](Viyaja from Bengal). Prince Vijaya and his party of several hundred people brought the Sinhala language(originally as Palli) to Sri Lanka from India around 500 BC. However The Sinhala script evolved from the ancient Brahmi script, which was introduced to the island in the 6th century BC.

Some of the Kings in the history of the Island are
• Vijaya 543 BC
• Panduvasudeva 504
• Pandukabhaya 437
• Mutasiva 367
• Devanampiya Tissa 307 B.C.
• Uttiya 267
• Mahasiva 257
Pandukabhaya was a king long after the Viyaya ( more than 100y since we have to deduct the numbers in BC period )

Again looking at the names one can conclude without prejudice the origin of the names.[/quote]

[b][color=red]The Origin of Tamil

Tamil Nadu[/color][/b]
__________________________________________________________
[b]I am no historian and do not claim to be one by speculating the origins.

According to you we sinhalese may be a mixture of Veddas, Dravidians and Aryans.

[color=red]Can you also post here, what is the mixture, SriLankan tamils are made of?[/color]
[color=blue]

That will help us to decide how sinhalese became the ethnic majority in this island.[/color] [/b]

Thank you victorragunath. I'll save your posting.

What I am puzzled is that, there are evidences that during Devanampiya Tissa (300 BCE) period Buddhism was practised in Pali and Tamil. Sinhalese is not mentioned. Also when Mahavamsa was written in 600 CE, it was written in Pali. Does this means Sinhalese did not exist in writing format?

Another thing is that Sinhalese letters are very similar to Malayalam and Kandyan Sinhalese traditions are very similar to Malayalees. How? Which came first Malayalam or Sinhalese?

Just one more, if Vaalmeegi (5000 BCE) wrote Ramayana in Himalayas, at a time when when there is no proper transportation, how did he knew about Lanka and Ram's Bridge?

.

Anonymouse

So what, I respect all the communities living on earth and every one has the right to live there life’s with dignity. There is no question what so ever regarding that. All I wanted to say is that the claims by the terrorists who say that there was a tradition home land for one community are bogus claims and you all are the people who try to manipulate the history and try to divide the country.

I ret orate that Sri Lanka is originally Sinhalese country( although you claim it vaddas) and now it’s a multi ethnic society and every body including the foreigners has the right to live anywhere they like and the majority rules. No terrorist has the right to claim a portion of the island as a separate home land. That’s all what I wanted to say.

[quote="sanjeewaw"]Anonymouse

Wijaya too was an invader and he was not a Sinhalese. The first Sinhalese king was Pandukabhaya. Sinhalese lived in the island centuries before wijaya. In those days Sinhalese was divided into four communities of hela people namely Yaksha, Raksha, Naga and Deva. (sew hela=sinhala) their language was hela basa or presently sinhala. King Pandukabhaya killed all the decedents of wijaya and united all the hela communities and founded the Sinhalese kingdom.

Your wadda story is a crape and waddas are also part of sinhalese.

The fact that you don’t care about the history is because that you are an invader. But it matters to the majority in the country and we value our history a lot because this is our country.[/quote]

I am an invader? I don't even live in Sri Lanka!

[b]Hello wake up, it's 2006[/b] and you are still living with this racist mentality?!! Like most Tamils born after 1300 can do something about where they are born.

Give me a break.

And your story about the Veddas are part of Sinhalase society is just because the Veddas has no other choice when the Sinhalase invaded the country. The people in Ceylon had no other choice when the Portugese, Dutch, Brittisch invaded the country.

I do care about history, if I didn't I wouldn't jump in and post some info about the Veddas. But I don't dig that far into history when I deal with the problems [b]right now[/b].

I am a humanist. I care about people. I look at what people are capable of doing and what they are actually doing. I don't judge people on things they have [b]no control[/b] over (that's their parent, their ancestors. you can't chose them, didn't you know this?!)

I don't care if you are Tamil, Sinhalase, Muslim, Isreali, Palestenian, Dutch, Russian. I treat all people as equal.

When I deal with [b]you[/b], I don't give a damn if your father is the King or works as a slave for the King. I only look at you and try to imagine how your father is. It seems lot's of people in Sri Lanka do this the other way around. They look at my father and imagine how I am going to be..

Mahavamsa mindset never had problems sharing Sri Lanka with other ethnic groups. We still do not have such problems except, we talk about what we believe of ours. But, we did not say, ever, that it could not be belonged to others. IT IS THE ONLY COUNTRY FOR US.

Whether Ravana was tamilian or not that important. Probably, Ravana may have talked the language which was the root for Sihala (proto-Sinhala).

Because, Sinhala, though it is related to Indo-European languages, it is not found else where which means it evolved in Sri Lanka. So Sinhala people should be indeigenous to Sri Lanka.

But in absolute sense, we everybody migrated from somewhere else. that is a proven fact in anthropology. Humans originated somewhere in Africa then migrated else where probably behind food - animals.

[quote="sanjeewaw"]

That’s correct but the problem is before Portuguese invaded the Tamils from south India invaded our country and established a colony in the northern part of Sri Lanka (Jaffna). Therefore we should correct that past mistake of sinhales rulers of allowing the invaders like tamils and portuguese to invade our land, when we seek an answer to the present day problems. The entire island was ruled by Sinhalese over 3000 years and we build up the civilisation and the history in the island since the beginning of human civilisation.[/quote]

The original inhabitants of Sri Lanka are the Veddas ( http://www.vedda.org).

The Sinhalase came from Nothern India. In The Buddhist chronicle the Mahavamsa states the landing of Vijaya, the first Sinhalese king, in 543 BC.

Tamils came from South India around 1200 AD.

The portugese came around 1500.

So it seems you don't find it acceptable that the Tamils were invading [b]"your country"[/b], but you find it acceptable to invade [b]the country of the Veddas[/b] who were thousends years before you?! Your [b]hypocrisy[/b] makes me laugh.

But anyways, who really cares about these facts right now? Societies change over time. Just look at countries like Germany, Soviet Union, Jugoslavia, Japan. It's no use to dig in the past for so long.

[quote="yamuna"]Both the Sri Lankan AND the Tamil Eeelam flags bear portraits of two dangerous carnivorous animals in the centre - the lion holds a weapon of war, the sword - and the tiger is ringed by bullets with guns above.
Hence BOTH are more or less SIMILAR ! !
There are no other flags among the rest of the 190 nations in the UN which have portraits of animals and weapons ! ![/quote]

Yamuna and True Reporter:

Many tamils, except a very few actually that is CHITRAGUPTAN, have the problem of thinking beyond their highly conditioned narrow minded thinking.

Sri Lankan flag's Lion represent a legend our history. It is far different from the tiger with a gunbelt and the guns. Your comparison is very narrow minded.

It is the same with true reporter. stay in the past. Do not come to the present.

HOW EVER, MY VIEW WITH RESPECT TO 12% ASKING 50% IS DIFFERENT. I exclude upcountry Indian tamils. So my estimate is 8% asking 50% . I am not sure what happens when tamil muslims are excluded. Again, G.G. ponnanbalam including many Jaffna tamil Elite who always had will to give their daughters in marriage to upcountry Aristocrats also did not have problems with the flag. SO the figure goes down.

I am suspicious about Mr. S. Nadesan being a tamil Catholic.

It is just greed, irresponsibility and selfishness. British colonial powers created it and their cultue because of that the TAMIL SUBMISSIVE MINDSET found a scaoe goat. We are taking all these because of our Mahavamsa mindset. The PATIANCE and our desire to FORGET THE PAST AND MOVE FORWARD (Compassion I suppose) we learned with the mahavamsa mindset were to be our disadvantages.

Both the Sri Lankan AND the Tamil Eeelam flags bear portraits of two dangerous carnivorous animals in the centre - the lion holds a weapon of war, the sword - and the tiger is ringed by bullets with guns above.
Hence BOTH are more or less SIMILAR ! !
There are no other flags among the rest of the 190 nations in the UN which have portraits of animals and weapons ! !