English historical narative - draft 6

DRAFT 5 - Justice

It was pitch black, the sound of crickets filled the night as they were quietly waiting in the bushes for the Sinhalese soldiers. They waited patiently in the forest, hoping for the first glimpse of light coming from the truck filled with Sinhalese soldiers. Suddenly a loud explosion came from the opposite direction. The plan to ambush the Sinhalese soldiers was a success! Kumar heaved a sigh of relief and said to his comrade, “Yes, we did it!”

Kumar was a 15 years old Tamil boy who aspired to be a government official one day, was living with his parents in Sri Lanka, which meant beautiful island. Kumar’s great grandparents were brought in by the British to work in a tea plantation. However, when the Tamils were brought in, tension between the Sinhalese and Tamils started during British colonial rule which favoured the Tamil minority in terms of jobs and education. In 1948, Sri Lanka gained independence. The government was mainly made up of Sinhalese, who passed the Ceylon Citizenship Act of 1948.

The Ceylon Citizenship Act caused Kumar and his family to become stateless, not a citizen of any country. However, his parents continued to work in the tea plantations, contributing to the Sri Lankan economy. Soon after, resettlement was introduced and caused unhappiness among Tamils. Sinhalese peasants were transferred to Tamil areas. Kumar found it annoying to live with Sinhalese peasants because of the Ceylon Citizen Act.

In 1956, The Official Language Act was established. Since Tamils were better at English, they occupied some of the most powerful jobs in the government service although they were the minority in the country. Now that the Official Language Act was established, Sinhala was made as the country’s official language. Tamils in the government were given three years to learn Sinhala or be dismissed. Kumar wanted to try to learn Sinhala so as to get a high ranking job to support his parents so that they would not need to work so hard in the plantations.

Three years passed and Kumar could not understand Sinhala. He felt so disappointed with himself. Luckily, there was a new university admission criteria and the examination was in English. Kumar felt there was hope again. He took the examination and qualified for an engineering course. He later found out that only a certain number of Tamils were able to get in the course since there was a higher number of Sinhalese in the population. Unfortunately, Kumar was unable to get in. He felt that the Sinhalese government was unfair to the Tamils. He decided to discuss the issue with his father.

Kumar looked up at his father, “Why is the government like this father?”

“I don’t know my son. We don’t have a choice.” His father replied with sorrow in his eyes.

“This is so unfair!” as Kumar clenched his fists in anger, “I will do something about this!”

With much anger, he decided to gather other Tamils to support him in making peaceful demands to the government to be fair to everyone and not give special treatment to certain religions. The Tamils did not resort to violence in their demands. When their demands were still not met, Kumar formed a militant group called the Liberation Tiger of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). They believed that violence was the only way to demand and obtain their Tamil rights. The Sinhalese also showed hostility towards the Tamils with violence, causing many riots for the next few years.

During one of the riots, Kumar had a plan to bomb up some Sinhalese soldiers. He ordered the members of LTTE to bury mines in the road which the Sinhalese soldiers used frequently. Beside the road there was a forest that proved to be a good hiding place for the LTTE. They hid in the forest quietly, waiting for their enemy to come.

Word count: 642