Though all Indians know about the ethnic violence in Sri Lanka and that it is between Singahlis and Tamils not many people know about the fact that at the root of this most violent and prolonged ethnic conflict lies a Chrsitain plot. Christian missionaries have been shameless in using racism as a weapon to divide people in order to fascilitate conversions. In Sri Lanka missionaries were frustrated at their efforts to convert Hindus by the vehement and rational repudiation of Christian theology by the famous exponent of Saivaite philosophy Arumuga Navalar. He exposed the theological absurdities of Christianity in his famous replies to missionary propaganda literature. It seems missioaries understood that unless the well-knit and vibrant Tamil community was alienated and scattered then only they can be made victims to their conversion plots.
Secretary, Australasian Federation of Tamil Associations, Mr.Ana.PararajaSingham remarks while discussing the ethnic conflict in the island,
...While legends and myths of the Mahavamsa formed the basis of Sinhala nationalism, the present nationalism is also due to the considerable influence wielded by European thought in the 19th and 20th centuries. This dealt with racial concepts such as "Aryan". The notion that the Sinhalese were an Aryan people was not a Mahavamsa inspired myth, but, an opinion attributable to European linguists who classified the languages spoken by the Sinhala and Tamil people into two distinct categories. Robert Caldwell,(a Bishop) in his "A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian South Indian Family of Languages (1856) " argued that there was no direct affinity between the Sinhalese and Tamil languages, while the German (missioanry scholar), Max Muller in his "Lectures on the Science of Language (1861)" declared that "careful and minute comparison" had led him to "class the idioms spoken in Iceland and Ceylon as cognate dialects of the Aryan family of languages". Contrary views were, however, expressed by others .... However, it was the "Aryan Theory' which was to hold sway as several European scholars lent support to this view.... The first to realise the enormous political gain to be made through tapping the explosive Mahavamsa Mindset was, S.W.R.D Bandaranaike, who ironically, was a member of the elitist Christian Bandaranaike-Obeyasekera clan. At the General election of 1956, Bandaranaike bulldozed his way into political power by successfully marshalling popular Sinhala support on a chauvinistic platform.Kamalika Pieris , a Singhalese intellectual agrees , in an article titled 'Ethnic conflict and Tamil Separatism" he examines the origin of the conflict and traces it to the race theories proposed by the missionary-scholars,
There developed the notion of an ‘Aryan race’ consisting of anybody who spoke an Aryan language, the Dravidian race consisting of anybody who spoke a Dravidian language and the Jews who spoke neither. Max Muller, the German linguist spoke of the ‘Aryan Race’ in 1888. Earlier Robert Caldwell had spoken of Dravidian languages in 1856. The Portuguese and the Dutch brought into Sri Lanka the prejudices available in their countries. Notably the Christian antagonism to Islam and other ‘heathen’ religions like Hinduism and Buddhism. But the concept of ‘race’ was introduced to the country during the British period, in the 19th century. The British labelled the Sinhala community as "Sinhalese race" and "Tamil race" in 1833 or 1871. 1833 saw the first communal representation in the Legislative Council and 1871 was the year of the first British Census of Ceylon.Thus after successfully creating two races where there used to be harmony it was just a few decades before discrimintion and oppression began eat into the vitals of the island. An island which could had allingredients to become a haven with two people who had more common with each other and almost no reasons to hate eachother now started despising each other. Hindu Tamils being a minority they soon became landless refugees and with their properties lost and their families destroyed in an ethnic violence, their binding traditions broken, Sri Lankan Tamils became a prey to the evangelising vultures. The effect Singhalese Chauvinist violence had on Tamils has been too much as shown below.
''In Colombo, it was the season of the annual Vel cart festival, which coincides with the Katargama festival season, and attracts to it all the castes and all the classes and all the races of Sri Lanka. The Vel Cart had come from Pettah to the Bambalapitiya (Hindu) temple when the disturbances broke. The chariot was set on fire.'' (N.Shanmugathasan,Sri Lanka: Racism and the Authoritarian State - Race and Class, Volume XXVI, A.Sivanandan and Hazel Waters, Institute of Race Relations, London)
The Hindu temples and related institutions which were damaged or destroyed during July 1983 included the following: