Sri Lankan Tamils

And it's interesting because the state, the Singhala state specifically, did not know how to differentiate between Tamils.

And that's actually how the Malay Tamils, even though they were not largely part of the the struggle that was obviously started for multiple reasons and we can go all the way back to the the singhala only act with in the 1956 i believe that happened so all the administrative rights that sri lankan tamils were fighting for and were denied of so much was actually twice denied for the malay tamil community for example if i'm saying there was 10 spots open in a government job and say that two were given to sri lankan tamils and eight were given to singhala people Even the two that were allocated for the Tamils were only given to the Sri Lankan Tamils.

And that also has a caste hierarchy that we don't talk enough about.

So Malaya Tamil identity has always been removed or erased from the very beginning of what Tamil identity looked like in Sri Lanka, simply because a colonial production of what ethnic communities were looked at, and also the Indian origin label that always kept the Malaya Tamil community outside of fully belonging to the Sri Lankan state.

For example, my own family were victims of the 1983 riots because what happened was the riots happened in Colombo and then they actually spread to the hill country where I've been reading literature, which is, of course, and it's so traumatizing to hear.

And it's something that the minute you say 1983 to any Tamil person, specifically anyone identifying within the Elam or the Sri Lankan identity, it brings up so many uncomfortable memories because it's something that we have also grown up like reading about, hearing about.

But interestingly, the Malay Tamil community does not speak about it as much as the Elam Tamils or the Sri Lankan Tamils do.

And that's also because I don't know what really, I mean, I also asked my parents and I asked my father who also fled.

And she says that.

And it's already started like, a bit of a kerfuffle online because all the Sri Lankans and, like, even the Sri Lankan Tamils are just like, well, you know, she doesn't talk for us, blah, blah.

But... it's her truth and it's the truth of her circumstances and her community and the fact that they underwent genocide and they were basically screwed over by multiple governments and the United Nations, you know, like, and she talks about that.

She talks about the fact that the women in her family stood up and there were activists and she's very vocal about it, about her identity and everything.