The history of Sri Lanka is unique because the relevance and richness of it extends beyond the areas of South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. The early human remains which were found on the island of Sri Lanka date back to about 38,000 years ago.
Indian Singaporeans are Singaporeans of Indian or of general South Asian ancestry. They constitute approximately 9.0% of the country's citizens, making them the third largest ancestry and ethnic group in Singapore.
After the outbreak of the Second World War, in the British Crown Colony of Ceylon, the government of Sir Don Baron Jayatilaka assured the British King and his government of its continued support.
The Tamil diaspora refers to descendants of the Tamil speaking immigrants who emigrated from their native lands in the southern Indian subcontinent to other parts of the world. They are found primarily in Malaysia, Arab states of the Persian Gulf, South Africa, North America, Western Europe, and Singapore. It can be divided into two main diasporic clusters, due to geographical, historical and cultural reasons, as Indian Tamil diaspora and Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora.
Sri Lankan Tamils, also known as Ceylon Tamils or Eelam Tamils, are Tamils native to the South Asian island state of Sri Lanka. Today, they constitute a majority in the Northern Province, form the plurality in the Eastern Province and are in the minority throughout the rest of the country. 70% of Sri Lankan Tamils in Sri Lanka live in the Northern and Eastern provinces.
Hindu religion and culture in Singapore can be traced to the 7th century AD, when Temasek was a trading post of Hindu-Buddhist Srivijaya empire. A millennium later, a wave of immigrants from southern India were brought to Singapore, mostly as coolies and indentured labourers by the British East India Company and colonial British Empire. As with Malay peninsula, the British administration sought to stabilise a reliable labour force in its regional plantation and trading activities; it encouraged Hindus to bring family through the kangani system of migration, settle, build temples and segregated it into a community that later became Little India.
The Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora refers to the global diaspora of Sri Lankan Tamil origin. It can be said to be a subset of the larger Sri Lankan and Tamil diaspora.
Samuel James Veluppillai Chelvanayakam was a Ceylonese lawyer, politician and Member of Parliament. He was the founder and leader of the Illankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK) and Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) and a political leader of the Ceylon Tamil community for more than two decades. Chelvanayakam has been described as a father figure to Ceylon's Tamils, to whom he was known as "Thanthai Chelva".
The origins of the Sri Lankan Civil War lie in the continuous political rancor between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Sri Lankan Tamils. According to Jonathan Spencer, a social anthropologist from the School of Social and Political Studies of the University of Edinburgh, the war is an outcome of how modern ethnic identities have been made and re-made since the colonial period, with the political struggle between minority Tamils and the Sinhalese-dominant government accompanied by rhetorical wars over archeological sites and place name etymologies, and the political use of the national past.
Dato' Sir Ernest Emmanuel Clough Thuraisingham or E.E.C. Thuraisingham was the first local Member (Minister) for Education in the Communities Liaison Committee formed to build communal fraternity in British-ruled Malaya, from 1951–1955. He is also the first Asian chairman of the Selangor Turf Club.
Sri Kandaswamy Kovil is a Hindu temple located along Jalan Scott, Brickfields in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The temple is over a century old.
British Sri Lankans are an ethnic group referring to British people who can trace their ancestry to Sri Lanka. It can refer to a variety of ethnicities and races, including Sinhalese, Tamils, Moors/Muslims and Burghers.
Social class in Sri Lanka is often described as casteless, though caste is still found on the island in both a symbolic and a practical sense. Caste is also used in an analogous sense to refer to the new social class divisions that have appeared in recent decades. The combination of ethnic nationalist movements that saw caste as an island-wide dividing tool, strong emphasis on providing access to education and healthcare regardless of background, and historic lack of discrimination among the colonial civil service played a factor in eradicating the caste system in most sectors of the island's society. Although the Buddhist culture actively fought against all forms of class discrimination, many Buddhist organizations used caste as a method to extract surplus from temple property.
The Sri Lankan diaspora are Sri Lankan emigrants and expatriates from Sri Lanka, and their descendants, that reside in a foreign country. They number a total estimated population of around 3 million.
General Anuruddha Leuke Ratwatte, frequently referred to as Anuruddha Ratwatte, was a Sri Lankan soldier and politician. He was a Cabinet Minister and Deputy Minister of Defence.
Sri Lankan Malaysians are people of full or partial Sri Lankan descent who were born in or immigrated to Malaysia.
The Jaffna was a Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.2 aircraft of the Royal Flying Corps. It was given to the British Government during World War I by Ceylonese Tamils who had emigrated from Jaffna to Malaya, on 22 December 1915. The Jaffna was allocated to No. 25 Squadron.
