2 May 2011
Like most children of the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora I have almost no experience of the Sinhalese as human beings. The breadth of my experience has been confined to a friend here, an acquaintance there, but no widespread human contact with a range of people in Sinhalese society. I suspect that many Sinhalese people, particularly here in Australia, are in a similar situation regarding the Tamils.The situation in Sri Lanka itself seems much the same from some accounts.
I raise the point about human contact because it is so vital to empathy and understanding. It is the absence of empathy that has given both sides a fairly vitriolic view of each other. The lack of real contact as equal human beings allows unhelpful stereotypes to prevail. An entire generation of Tamils brought up on the news reports that they have seen from Sri Lanka and the commentaries that they receive from the Tamil community might likely perceive the Sinhalese as violent and criminal. Similarly, the Sinhalese fed a diet of stories from government media about the Tamil Tigers might view the Tamils as terrorists and troublemakers. Racism grows in the absence of understanding.