Photo taken by a child
If you say, ‘I’m Sri Lankan”, people then ask what race you are – Sinhala, Tamil or Muslim. For an certain generation of children, however, the race label is becoming completely inapplicable. There are quarter-caste children of half-caste parents who really have no race at all. They’re simply Sri Lankan. They look much the same as other children (perhaps because races were mixed in the first place) but there is no racial label you can stick on them. For example, I know children who are half-Burgher/half-Sinhalese. Burgher is a mixed race in the first place, what happens when you mix it further? Which is the dominant allele, Sinhala or Burgher? Is race transmitted through the father or mother? To all these questions the answer is irrelevant. These children are simply Sri Lankan.
Of course, a child born in the Vanni or Matara is likely to be either Tamil or Sinhala, but even elements of that are illusory. There are Sinhala castes around the coasts which arrived later than most Tamils and mixed their Indian blood with the locals. Then Arab traders are the supposed ancestors of the ‘Muslim’ race, even though they look like everybody else and are probably mostly Tamil. Personally, I think if you go back far enough we’re all Tamil, and Africans before that but I remain, on paper, 100% Sinhalese.
Race is fundamentally an illusion and after that a social construct. Real, but artificial. The Hispanic ‘race’, for example, is a mix of European settlers and natives. They are now having trouble integrating with a mix of European settlers and slaves that call themselves American. At some point race becomes a political identity, but modern races actually form out of some sort of race mixing. Barack Obama the American, for example, or the presumptive Brazilian President Rousseff whose father was Bulgarian.
Sri Lanka, while not a recent settler nation, is still an island. We are about 30km from India and our ancestors have been sailing for thousands of years. Indeed, that distance is even swimmable. The idea that the Sinhala race descended from one ‘Aryan’ King Vijaya is pure myth, they have been waves of settlement from India over the years. When people say Tamils should go back to India they might as well be talking to themselves. We all came from India at some point. Being an island, there were also constant visitors with the ensuing marriages, affairs and otherwise contracted pregnancies. So, whether people admit it or not, there are no ‘pure’ races here.
As those artificially stable races intermarry you then get to a point where the illusion is no longer sustainable. I know a kid who is quarter Sinhalese, quarter Tamil and two highly disparate quarts of Burgher. What on earth is he, if not for Sri Lankan?
I’m surprised to hear that people ask you what your race is (in Sri Lanka at least). I’ve never been asked that here, only abroad (sadly, the diaspora tends to be much more racially-organised than over here).
Who are you kidding? Mixed marriages (inter ethnic that is) are still abysmally low in Sri Lanka. The people you describe are probably something like 0.01 % of the population. The vast, vast majority are either Sinhalese, Tamil or Muslim (Moor or Malay).
And the Burghers? They are an insignificant community numbering something like 30 000. There are probably more Malayalis and Telugu people than Burghers.
@Ruki I think there are a large number who label themselves though they do come from mixed marriages through generations. A friend had a Tamil grandfather but she goes as a Sinhalese. My grandmother had blue eyes but she’s Sinhalese.
We may think of ‘vast’ races in Sri Lanka, but being settlers and with the years of invasions/ colonization, I think we’re pretty much mixed too.
@Indi I like “Race is fundamentally an illusion and after that a social construct.”
Except race isn’t an illusion. And i don’t see why it being a social construct makes it any less real, for example our penal code is purely a social construct.
I’ve had a similar experience to Gehan. I’ve never been asked my race in Sri Lanka -but I live abroad at the moment and the diaspora never forget to ask.
same here. The diaspora, at least the people I’ve met, also seem to have more jingoist sentiment that the people here
Very good observation. The word “?????” (jathiya = nation) is getting bigger over each generation and it is a good sign.
I used to stay in a boarding house run by a very caste-sensitive old lady. She used to refer to a couple of “walauwas” closeby as “??? ?????? ????????” (ape jathiye minissu = people of our nation), which she meant as being of the same caste.
This may not be a perfect generalization, but not very wrong:
In our grandfather’s generation, nation = caste.
In our father’s generation, nation = ethnic group (Sinhala etc).
In our generation, nation = country.
I think the country is the proper unit for Nation as of today. It is too premature to put the humankind as one nation, because the country is a legal boundary for things such as visas, citizenship, voting which may blur with treaties and other such effects. Any inter-country thing is several notches difficult than within-country.
Don’t you have to register yourself as a race when you sign up for an ID card? Doesn’t that mean that mixed marriages have to choose a race for their children?
I had to get a police report once, and in it you have to say what kind if race you are.
What happens if you put “human” under race?
I agree that there couldn’t be any pure races here anymore, but there must be some slight distinction still, because all the children of mixed parents I know seem better looking or more intelligent (or both), than the kids of parents of the same race. The intelligence part may even be due to exposure to two cultures from a young age and the wider language skills they aquire as a result.
Human is the species, not the race.
I’m often asked what race I am here in SL, but I’ve been asked it by diaspora members too. Yes, you gotta state your race when applying for an ID or birth certificate, and if you look at your ID you’ll see that minorities have their mother tongue on it in addition to Sinhalese.
Generally, for official purposes (and the DBU!), the paternal line denotes race. This is ridiculous but there it is. I’m half Tamil, but since my father’s a Burgher, I’m classed a Burgher. I’ve cousins whose mother is Burgher and father half Burgher but with a Tamil father — so my cousins are three-quarters Burgher, more Burgher than me, but are classed as Tamil because of the paternal line. I personally know a “Sinhalese” family that has generation after generation married Tamil women, until the only thing Sinhalese is the name. They are truly bilingual, but are classed Sinhalese. I’m sure there are many such examples with other races.
However, I think this is overwhelmingly a Colombo thing, and if you were to take the country as a whole, people mostly marry within their race/community.
In my view, sinhaleese must be connected to Malabaris. Rural women in both community wears in same theme. And we sri lankans use coconut like them too.
But sinhala numbers and hindi numbers look like connectd too..
Oh wow, so using coconut connects the Sinhaleese to the Malabaris eh?
Righteo!
Nt coconut men! Cooking style.
Plus, if you compare sinahala and malabari dance; both in same theme, same concept consume
Stop making up crap, please. It’s embarassing.
To be Sinhalese is to be “Sri Lankan.” The Sinhalese are a mix of different people who made the island their home.
I am a Sri Lankan
Do you know any children who have a Sinhalese army soldier as the father and an IDP Tamil woman as the mother?
Hmmm … no, I didn’t think so …
Absolutely – though those that survive are an absolutely amazing beacon of hope to all who know such people. They survive tremendous pressures.
you are right. just look at the burgher population and portugese traditions in the south. all the light skinned sinhalese are mixed. now rajapakse is inviting chinese to make chingalese and mandarin will be tayght in schools.. in conrast, the (jaffna) tamils are strictly endogamous.
I know some very fair skinned Jaffna Tamils with Irish surnames.
irish surname? they may be one of those converted to catholic religion.
this is not like all the fonseka, de silva, peiris, percy portugese surnames that you can find commonly among sinhalese.
Yes, you’re right, Tamils are known for inbreeding.
These children may “appear” not to have a race. Oh, but they do. Every single Sri Lankan does. Every single Lankann belongs 100% to a single race. By Sri Lankan law a child is the father’s race. There is no such thing as half-race, quarter race, etc. Yeah, very dumb, very sexist (like countless other Sri Lankan laws), makes no sense given that scientifically we get 50% of our genes from each parent. This also leads to more discrimination and mis-treatment of women by their communities. A couple of years ago a prominent Burger man wrote an article in I think it was Daily News, essentially lamenting that the Burger race is disappearing because their women marry into other races. In typical Sri Lankan sexist fashion, he found no fault with the stupid laws. Instead he wanted Burger women not to marry outside the race. Talk about encroaching on women’s freedoms and trying to control them. Of course if Burgher men married outside the race, it’s fine and dandy, because the kids would be Burghers. This of course applies to all races. And all races have this type of views. What’s funny is someone who is only 16% Sinhala (or any other race) by DNA (because of generations of inter-racial marriage), is however Sinhala according to the law, which is what matters at the end of the day. We may all look alike, but we are our father’s race. The mother doesn’t count silly, she’s a woman, and women don’t count in Sri Lanka. People are worried about the rights of minority races, minority races have rights far superior to any woman in Sri Lanka, and yet no one makes a peep about that.
“Burghers” make no fucking sense whatsoever. They have some European blood somewhere down the line and a whole shitload of mostly Sinhalese (and to a lesser extent Tamil) blood in them and consider themselves totally different to everyone else. IMO they are nothing but Sinhalese (who are a mixed group of people anyway) who just haven’t assimilated into mainstream Sinhalese society. The malayali origin Sinhalese and the Tamil origin Sinhalese and the Telugu origin Sinhalese and the Javanese origin Sinhalese and the Malay origin Sinhalese have given up their original identities and accepted the indigenous Sinhalese identity which came into existence in Sri Lanka. The so-called “burghers” haven’t done so. It’s about time they did. Then they wouldn’t be a group “on the way to extinction” because their women “marry outside of the communtiy.”
Ruki, thanks for your comment. Your points were most illuminating. About my Burgher reference above, I wish to clarify that I gave that story about Burghers only as an example to illustrate what takes place in ANY race in Sri Lanka. I wasn’t trying to single Burghers out. Sinhala, Tamil, Moor, and other races also think along the same lines, if not about extinction, then about expansion of their race, or simply the reluctance to see their women essentially leave their race and join another. The fault is with the nonsensical laws. It is these laws that put women in this situation. The laws still say, children belong solely to the father, essentially.
It gets worse. Imagine that Tamils and Moors didn’t have full citizenship rights in Sri Lanka. They can enjoy citizenship, but they cannot pass their citizenship to their children. Kids of Tamils and Moors do not automatically become citizens even though their parents are Sri Lankans. Only Sinhala have this right of inheriting citizenship. Nor can a Tamil or Moor marry a foreigner and have their spouse become a Sri Lankan citizen automatically. Only a Sinhala can. Tamils and Moors are a kind of second class citizen. Imagine such a situation. Imagine these to be the laws of Sri Lanka. The international community will have a heart attack at such gross discrimination. Imagine the uproar both in Lanka and outside. The minority communities will be so angry and launch all kinds of wars and movements. The situation will be discussed by everyone ad nauseum. No Tamil can say that any discrimination they have claimed comes even close in comparison to this imaginary situation.
Yet, this is the citizenship status of every Sri Lankan woman, no matter the race. 50% of the population is discriminated like this blatantly and legally, yes that is the law. But no one cares. No one complains. International community thinks they have a right to interfere only for injustices not involving women, so they are mum. And the men of all the races, be it Sinhala, Tamil, Moor or Burgher, they don’t care either. Women, who find it extremely difficult in any culture (even Western) to express feminist views and find support also stay silent. But this is the sad status of any and all Lankan women. You really don’t have a right to the country to pass on your citizenship to your husband or children. Yes, there are crazy, lengthy (10 years range) ways in which you can, but the injustice and inequality is there. A child who wants to get citizenship through her mother has to live in Sri Lanka without leaving the country for 10 years. If you leave even to attend your father’s funeral, you start your 10 years over again. But a child of Lankan father, gets the citizenship as a birthright, just through the birth certificate, like we all got it. This is gross inequality of women in Sri Lanka. No one seems to mind! If this was done to Tamils or Moors or another race, there will be bloody murder.
Then we have special Muslim marriage rights. A Muslim man can marry 4 wives. This in itself is bad, the whole country should have a single law, that is independent of any religion, even Buddhism. But that’s another issue. All religions are ancient, and they all have aspects in them that harm women. But that is not my point here. Imagine what happens when a Sinhala, Tamil or Burgher woman marries a Muslim man. Her rights don’t count. Everything is from the male perspective. So the man can still marry other wives legally, the woman has no legal protection! This shows that a woman’s rights in Sri Lanka are only an illusion. They are not really there. They appear to be there because they usually marry within their race, and if tehy don’t, they rarely complain. If Sinhala, Tamil and Burgher women really had rights to in the marriage laws that state a person can only marry one person, their right would still apply even if they married a Muslim man. But they don’t have rights. The laws are written only from the perspective of the Sinhala, Tamil, Burgher and Muslim men.
The legal injustices for women are widespread. Lanka needs to rectify the rights of women before anything else, because no race comes even close to the level of inequality and discrimination that women are subjected to. And you can’t make social change without laws. The laws come first. The culture and society falling in line follows.