Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism - Before Independence - Early Beginning

Early Beginning

The arrival of Protestant missionaries on a large scale to Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon), beginning in 1814, was a primary contributor to the development of political awareness among Tamils. The activities of missionaries from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Methodists and Anglican churches led to a revival among Tamils of the Hindu faith. Arumuga Navalar led a Hindu religious revivalist and reformist movement as a defensive response to the threat to their native culture posed by the British colonial and missionary activities. He translated literary works to encourage the use of the Tamil Language and spread Hindu Saiva principles. Navalar’s efforts to revive Hinduism, the predominant religion of the Sri Lankan Tamil people, influenced Tamils who built their own schools, temples, and societies, and who published literature to counter that of the missionaries. Thus, by 1925 nearly 50 schools, including the Batticotta Seminary, were fully functioning. This revival movement also set the stage for modern Tamil prose.

The success of this effort led the Tamils to think confidently of themselves as a community and prepared the way for their awareness of a common cultural, religious and linguisitic kinship in the mid-nineteenth century. For these contributions to the Tamil people, Arumugam Navalar has been described as a leader who gave his community a distinct identity.