The "Sri Lanka Matha" is the national anthem of Sri Lanka. "Sri Lanka Matha" was composed by Ananda Samarakoon and was originally titled "Namo Namo Matha".
Don Stephen Senanayake was a Ceylonese statesman. He was the first Prime Minister of Ceylon having emerged as the leader of the Sri Lankan independence movement that led to the establishment of self-rule in Ceylon. He is considered as the "Father of the Nation".
Mass media of Sri Lanka consist of several different types of communications media: television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and Web sites. State and private media operators provide services in the main languages Sinhala, Tamil and English. The government owns two major TV stations, radio networks operated by the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC), and newspaper titles in Sinhala, Tamil, and English.
Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka are Tamil people of Indian origin in Sri Lanka. They are also known as Malayaga Tamilar, Hill Country Tamils, Up-Country Tamils or simply Indian Tamils. They predominantly descend from workers sent from Southern India to Sri Lanka in the 19th and 20th centuries to work in coffee, tea and rubber plantations. Some also migrated on their own as merchants and as other service providers. These Tamil speakers mostly live in the central highlands, also known as the Malayakam or Hill Country, yet others are also found in major urban areas and in the Northern Province. A majority of Hill Country Tamils are predominantly descendants from the lower working castes of South India. Although they are all termed as Tamils today, some have Telugu and Malayalee origins as well as diverse South Indian caste origins. They are instrumental in the plantation sector economy of Sri Lanka. In general, socio-economically their standard of living is below that of the national average and they are described as one of the poorest and most neglected groups in Sri Lanka. In 1964 a large percentage were repatriated to India, but left a considerable number as stateless people. By the 1990s most of these had been given Sri Lankan citizenship. Most are Hindus with a minority of Christians and Muslims amongst them. There are also a small minority followers of Buddhism among them. Politically they are supportive of trade union-based political parties that have supported most of the ruling coalitions since the 1980s.
The Official Language Act , commonly referred to as the Sinhala Only Act, was an act passed in the Parliament of Ceylon in 1956. The act replaced English with Sinhala as the sole official language of Ceylon, with the exclusion of Tamil.
Sri Lankan Moors are an ethnic minority group in Sri Lanka, comprising 9.3% of the country's total population. Most of them are native speakers of the Tamil language. The majority of Moors who aren’t native to the North and East also speak Sinhalese as a second language. They are predominantly followers of Islam. The Sri Lankan Muslim community is mostly divided between Sri Lankan Moors, Indian Moors, Sri Lankan Malays and Sri Lankan Bohras. These groups are differentiated by lineage, language, history, culture and traditions.
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.
The Soulbury Commission, announced in 1944 was, like its predecessor, the Donoughmore Commission, a prime instrument of constitutional reform in British Ceylon. The immediate basis for the appointment of a commission for constitutional reforms was the 1944 draft constitution of the Board of Ministers, headed by D.S. Senanayake. This commission ushered in Dominion status and Independence to Sri Lanka in 1948. Its constitutional recommendations were largely those of the 1944 Board of Ministers' draft, a document reflecting the influence of Senanayake and his main advisor, Sir Ivor Jennings.
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.
Dinamina is a Sinhala language daily newspaper in Sri Lanka. It is published by the Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Limited, a government-owned corporation. The newspaper commenced publishing in 1909. It was founded by the Sinhalese scholar H. S. Perera who acted as both owner and editor-in-chief of the paper at the outset. Upon Perera's death in December 1914, D. R. Wijewardena bought out the company. It is now owned by the government of Sri Lanka.
The Ceylon Citizenship Act No. 18 of 1948 was a controversial law passed by the Ceylon Parliament which did not grant citizenship to Indian Tamils, who were 11% of the population.
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.
PPR Subramaniam Chettiar (1901-1975) was an Indian journalist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist.
Tamil settlement of Sri Lanka refers to the settlement of Tamils, or other Dravidian peoples, from Southern India to Sri Lanka. Due to Sri Lanka's close proximity to Southern India, Dravidian influence on Sri Lanka has been very active since the early Iron Age or megalithic period.
The Sirima–Shastri Pact or Srimavo-Shastri Pact was an agreement that was signed between Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, and Lal Bahadur Shastri, the Prime Minister of India, on 30 October 1964. Officially, it was known as Agreement on Persons of Indian Origin in Ceylon. It was a significant agreement in determining the status and future of people of Indian origin in Ceylon.
George Rosario Motha was a Ceylonese politician, lawyer and Tamil activist.
