How far were the citizenship rights a cause of conflict between the Sinhalese and Tamils in Sri Lanka?

Since Sri Lanka became independent, there was an unequal criteria for citizenship rights in Sri Lanka. A citizen’s father and grandfather had to be born in Sri Lanka, meaning that many Indian Tamils were denied basic rights like voting although they had worked in the country for a long time. Although Sri Lanka negotiated with India to allow Indian Tamils to return to India, while giving the rest Sri Lankan citizenship in 1964, it did not hold up its end of the bargain, and 100,000 Tamils remain stateless.

This led to anger among the Tamils because they felt that their contributions to Sri Lanka had been ignored. Furthermore, they felt Sri Lanka had betrayed them by not fulfilling the 1964 agreement. Given that these policies were dictated by the Sinhalese, Tamil anger was inevitably directed at them, contributing to the Sri Lankan conflict.

However, there are other factors that contributed to the conflict. Before independence, unequal job opportunities already contributed to conflict. English-educated Tamils were given preference over the Sinhalese in the British civil service. This led the Sinhalese to resent the Tamils.

After independence, the situation was reversed when Sinhala was made the official language of government. Tamils who did not learn the language were dismissed. This caused the Tamils to blame the Sinhalese for their unfairness and the loss of jobs, leading to greater anger and worsening the conflict.

However, this factor is not as significant as citizenship rights in causing conflict. This is because the language policy was altered to accommodate Tamil majority areas.

For example, the 1978 Sri Lankan Constitution recognized Tamil as an official language and allowed it to be used to run the administration in the Tamil majority northern and eastern provinces.
Hence, since 1978, Tamils had less cause for resentment in this area, as they could work in the civil service. This lessens the potential for conflict because they did not lose out to the Sinhalese in Tamil majority provinces.


Equal opportunities were actually present before independence; university admissions were based on merit. However, the Sinhalese still resented the disproportionate number of Tamils entering university.

After independence, the Sinhalese government changed education policies that made it harder for Tamils and easier for the Sinhalese to enter university.

For example, Tamil students had to obtain higher admissions scores compared to the Sinhalese in order to get into the same course. Furthermore, quotas were set on the number of Tamils who could be admitted to any course. This led to a drop in the number of Tamils getting a tertiary education.

As a result, the Tamils felt that they were being victimized since they were deprived of higher education. They saw it as a deliberate attempt by the government to keep them in low-skilled, low-paying jobs. Hence, Tamil resentment was once again directed at the Sinhalese and worsened the conflict.

To a large extent, unequal citizenship rights contributed to the Sri Lankan conflict, since it enshrined unequal treatment of the Tamils under the law. However, this is not to the exclusion of unfair education policies that made the Tamils feel victimized by the Sinhalese. Unequal job opportunities, while also leading to the conflict, was not such a major factor since the unequal policy has been changed to allow Tamil to be an official language of administration. Therefore, Tamils had less cause for resentment in this area. This means that unequal citizenship rights and education policy contributed to the conflict to a larger extent.