Among the most poignant features of Sri Lanka's current ethnic conflict are the episodes of violence directed by Tamil activist groups, principally the LTTE, against the Muslim minority in the north and east of the island.

The violence which began in the years 1984-7 drew national and international attention to the complexities of Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict. But those events paled into insignificance in comparison with the scale of violence against the Muslims in 1990. In August 1990 nearly 300 unarmed Muslims were slaughtered by the LTTE in several incidents in Batticaloa, the most notorious of these was the cold-blooded shooting of 120 or more Muslims at prayer time in a mosque at Kattankudy, a Muslim suburb of Batticaloa. Then in October 1990 came a concerted, and successful, attempt to expel the Muslim minority as an entity from the Jaffna peninsula, and from their traditional villages in the strategic district of Mannar which has had, for centuries, a large Muslim settlement.

Two conflicting views of the Muslims' role in the Sri Lanka's polity lay at the heart of the problem. For decades, Tamil leaders or politicians spoke of the Tamils and Muslims as one people united by language but divided by religion. That is at best a half-truth, and in any event it is passionately rejected by the Muslims for whom the language they speak is much less important than the religion and culture that divides them from the Tamils. The Muslims and Tamils pursue different goals and have adopted different strategies in the Sri Lankan political process. The Tamil-Muslim conflicts of the 1980s and 1990s reflected these differences.

To a certain extent the roots of these differences lie in the demography, the numbers and the distribution of Sri Lanka's Muslim minority. Never more than six to seven per cent of the island's population, they are geographically dispersed, unlike Sri Lanka's Tamils who form a clear majority in the Jaffna peninsula and most other parts of the Northern Province as well as in the Batticaloa district of the Eastern Province.

In no district do the Muslims constitute a majority; in all except the present Ampara district of the Eastern Province (until 1960, Ampara was part of the Batticaloa district), they are a small minority. There is a concentration of Muslims in the capital city, Colombo. Generally, they define their ethnicity in terms of religion and culture, not language.

Today, most Muslims speak the language of the district in which they live, while a great many are bi-lingual, speaking both Sinhala and Tamil while a few speak English as well. Before Sri Lanka regained her independence almost all Muslims spoke Tamil and very few were proficient in Sinhala. Indeed, Tamil had long been the lingua franca of maritime trade in the Indian ocean region; as a trading and seafaring community, Muslims had been exposed for centuries to the influence of that language. More importantly, the Koran had been translated into Tamil; thus even Sinhala-speaking Muslims had perforce to be proficient in Tamil upto now. (It is only recently that the Koran was translated into Sinhala). However, unlike Tamils - and the Muslims of Tamilnadu - Muslims in Sri Lanka have no great emotional commitment to the Tamil language. They have demonstrated little reluctance to adopt Sinhala as a medium of instruction in schools and as the principle, if not sole, national language. But they have also found it exceedingly difficult to abandon Tamil altogether.

Through most of the l9th century Sri Lanka's Muslims were an apolitical group. Even the process of religious revival among the island's Muslims, initiated during the last quarter of the l9th century and continued during the first quarter of the 20th century, made no difference in this; there was little or no political content in it in the sense of an opposition to British rule, much less any anxiety to see it replaced by a national regime. The Muslims were generally well behind the Tamils and Sinhalese in the formulation of political demands and pressure for constitutional reforms. The situation did not change much even after the Sinhalese-Muslim riots of 1915, by far the most serious outbreak of communal violence on the island since the establishment of British rule.

For a decade or more after the 1915 riots, the mood of the Muslim community was determined by a mixture of fear and suspicion of Sinhalese nationalism. Thus, there was very little support from the Muslims for the Sinhalese and Tamil leadership's major constructive political initiative in 1917-9, the establishment of the Ceylon National Congress. The Muslims stood aloof, more than a little apprehensive of this new political organization.

Pre-independence political attitudes

A prominent feature of Muslim political attitudes in the early 1920s was an alliance of convenience between the Muslims and Tamils. While Muslims' acceptance of Tamil leadership at this stage was a natural result of the 1915 riots, their acquiescence in the leadership of Ramanathan (who had turned against his erstwhile Sinhalese allies and supporters in the early 1920s) is more surprising. It is evidence of the depth of their disillusionment with the Sinhalese.

Ramanathan had been at the centre of a controversy in the mid and late 1880s over his publicly expressed views on the ethnic identity of Sri Lankan Muslims, or Moors as he preferred to call them. Ramanathan argued in 1885 that the Moors of Sri Lanka were Tamils in 'nationality' and 'Mohammedans' in religion, a contention which greatly offended the Muslims, and which was vigorously refuted by M.C. Siddi Lebbe, the main spokesman for Muslims at that time.

Ramanathan made a more comprehensive restatement of these views in 1888 in a public lecture on "The Ethnology of the 'Moors' of Sri Lanka", delivered in Colombo. As the representative of the Tamil community in the Legislative Council (1879-91), Ramanathan was often inclined to talk expansively on behalf of the 'Tamil-speaking peoples' of Sri Lanka, a categorization which enabled him to place Muslims within the scope of his tutelage as a legislator. In this claim, as in so many other ways, Ramanathan was the precursor of views and attitudes of mainstream Tamil politics of the future, of the Federal Party and the TULF. Then, as now, however, the Muslims rejected this claim and refused this tutelage.

But in the 1920s the Muslims' acceptance of Ramanathan's leadership - just a few years after his spirited defence of the Sinhalese leadership in the aftermath of the 1915 riots - was a triumph of hope over experience. On this occasion the hope was fulfilled in ample measure. The Muslims remained Ramanathan's allies until his death in 1930. Indeed, their acceptance of Tamil leadership on political issues lasted for some time after Ramanathan's death.

None of the Muslim representatives in the Legislative Council was a major political figure. All were conservatives in political attitude; they were either somewhat diffident when they expressed their views or gave silent but unswering support to the British administration and, later, Ramanathan. The impression one has of them is of men who were distinctly uncomfortable in the parry and thrust of debate in the national legislature.

The keynote of Muslim politics of the inter-war period was one of self-preservation; to safeguard, sustain and advance their distinctive cultural identity. They sought and obtained state support for this in two distinct fields, the first of which was the consolidation and recognition of the personal laws of Muslims.

The Muslim Marriage and Divorce Registration Ordinance 27 of 1929, which became operative from 1937, set up a system of domestic relations courts presided over by Muslim judges (quazis). These courts explicitly recognized orthodox Muslim law pertaining to marriage and divorce; the same process was instituted for inheritance in the Muslim Intestate Succession and Wakfs Ordinances of 1931.

Second, there was the field of education. The divisiveness of education - dividing Muslims from Tamils - began in the 1940s, and has continued to the present day.

The early 1940s marked the beginning of a significant change in the Muslims' attitude to the nationalist movement as well as a reappraisal of their position on the impending transfer of power. The key figure in this change of attitude was a newcomer to the national legislature, A.R.A. Razik, whose father W.M.A. Rahiman had served in the Legislative Council during the years 1900-17, i.e., during the period of the riots as well.

From the early 1940s onwards, the Muslims' response to political and constitutional changes can be viewed in terms of the attitudinal differences between T.B. Jayah, a Malay and senior Muslim member of the national legislature, on the one side, and Razik, on the other. Subtle and muted at first, these differences, became more pronounced in time as Razik gained more confidence as a political leader and greater influence within the national legislature. Some of these differences were inherent in the controversy that broke out over the terms 'Moor' and 'Muslim', with Razik emerging as the advocate of the first and Jayah of the second.

In 1942, a third Muslim, Dr. M.C.M. Kaleel, entered the legislature; in time he became one of the most respected Muslim politicians, who retained a prominent position in national politics till the time of his death in 1994's. Equally important, Razik, who had been a member of the Executive Committee of Local Administration under the Donoughmore system of government switched over to the Education Committee on 10 March 1942, and that Committee thus had two Muslim members (the other being Jayah).

This concentration of attention on education, in a bid to give a boost to Muslim education, brought Razik into conflict with the Tamils. This was especially so with regard to the Eastern Province where Muslim schools had mostly Tamil school teachers or where Muslims attended Tamil schools. Razik deplored this state of affairs. He used his influence, through the Education Committee, to build the resources of Muslim schools and secure the appointment of more Muslim teachers.

The insensitivity of Tamils to these Muslim concerns brought home to men like Razik the need to emphasize a Muslim identity in the national education system. The change of mood was illustrated by the voting patterns in the State Council on J.R. Jayewardene's motion, debated in May 1944, to make Sinhala the national language of Sri Lanka, and especially in the contrasting stands taken by Razik and Jayah in the debate and in the voting on the motion.

When Jayewardene first introduced his motion in 1943, there was much opposition to it on the grounds that it made no provision for Tamil. By the time the motion came up for debate in 1944, Jayewardene had agreed to amend it to include Tamil along with Sinhala as the national languages. With the mover's consent a Tamil member, V. Nalliah, moved an amendment 'that the words "and Tamil" be added after the word "Sinhalese" wherever the latter occurs.' The amendment was debated and put to a vote on 25 May 1944. It was carried by 29 votes to 8. Jayah voted for the amendment; Razik joined four Sinhalese in voting against it - they wanted Sinhala as the sole national language.

Razik's speech on this occasion - a brief one - is worth quoting:

"I feel that in the best interest of Lanka, my mother country, I must stand up for the motion of the honourable member for Kelaniya (J.R. Jayewardene); that is that Sinhalese should be the official language of the country. However, there is not the slightest doubt that this cannot be done in a hurry, in a year or two, or even in 10 years. I certainly feel that in the best interests of Lanka and her people one language will bring unity among our people. We are really divided at the present moment. Each community has its own language. But if we all take to one language, then we will not think in terms of Tamils, Moors, Sinhalese, Burghers, Malays, and so on."

The Tamils could no longer take Muslim support for granted in their political campaigns. By the early 1940s the political alliance between Tamils and Muslims came apart over conflicting attitudes to the transfer of power, with the Muslims supporting the Sinhalese leadership on this and the Tamils acquiescing in it with unconcealed reluctance. This contrast in political attitudes has persisted in the post-independence period. (More next week).

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