“Is there such a large area for 12 percent of Tamils on the map of Tamileelam?
“Is there such a large area for 12 percent of Tamils on the map of Tamileelam?
Is Puttalam district, where the Sinhalese majority live, also a place for Tamils?” – these are the questions we are widely asking today.
The answer to this is hidden in a historical document called the Cleghorn Minute written in 1799.
Sir Hugh Cleghorn, who served as an officer of the British East India Company, submitted a report on the history and heritage of the Sri Lankan people in 1799. In it, he mentioned one thing that is very important in the history of Tamil national politics.
“From ancient times, the island of Sri Lanka has been ruled by two different nations. The Sinhalese live in the south and the west. The Malabaris (Tamils) live in the north from the Walave River to Chilaw.” He mentioned.
The boundary specified by Clayhorn (from the Valavai River to Chilaw) extended beyond the present-day Northern and Eastern provinces and included the Puttalam district.
This reference was used as the primary source for determining the boundaries of Tamileelam by C. Sundaralingam in 1957 and later in the Vaddukottai Resolution in 1977.
Accordingly, a large part of the present-day Puttalam district is the historical homeland of the Tamils.
These boundaries specified by Clayhorn were taken as the basic source in the 1977 election manifesto of the Tamil Liberation Front and later in the documents of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Thus, the present-day Puttalam district, where the Sinhalese majority live, was identified as the Tamil homeland.
Most of the present-day Sinhalese people living in areas like Puttalam, Chilaw and Wennappuwa are of Tamil origin.
This was the result of a social change called ‘Sinhalization’.
Tamil was once the language of worship and instruction in Catholic schools and churches in and around Wennappuwa. Even today, we can see the elderly speaking Tamil fluently.
The ‘Karava’ and ‘Bharatha’ communities in these areas have identified themselves as Sinhalese over time. But their family names still reveal their Tamil background.
There is an interesting point in Clayhorn’s note. He also made a point of mentioning that a certain section of the Sinhalese had migrated from ‘Siam’ (Thailand).
This information was later considered controversial by Sinhalese historians.
However, it is said that the section on ‘Siam’ in the copies of Clayhorn’s note in Sri Lanka was deliberately deleted (torn out).
This information resurfaced in the original copy taken from the British Archives in the 1930s.
It is undeniable that the Chilaw and Puttalam areas mentioned by Clayhorn were once dominated by the Tamil language.
This is evidenced by the fact that in areas such as Wennappuwa, the elderly still speak Tamil and the presence of Tamil liturgical signs in Catholic churches.
However, due to language change and cultural integration that has occurred over the past two centuries, these areas have today become Sinhala-majority areas.
A brief note by a British official named Clayhorn has put an end to the Puttalam-Chilaw boundary issues and historical debates that continue to this day.
(Translation by Tamilpriya)
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