I see no difference between Dravidianism conflict with north india and tamil vs sinnalees conflict in srilanka. To research on this conflict you should atleast travel back to 200 years in history and see where the root cause is.
Theosophical society Bramhanayana sabai
Both the Anti-Tamil movement and Dravidianism starts 200 years back during colonial period.
Apparently we will end up in accepting and acknowledging the colonialist’s hidden religious motivation behind these conflicts.
Even before delving into the Sinhalese tamil divide we should first try to explore the Aryan & dravidian divide which also was created by Colonial masters in tandem with the missionaries in india.
The official inception of dravidian theory was during late 19th century by Bishop Robert caldwell and his successor GU pope.
Caldwell deliberately knowing the fact that the alphabets and words formation is same in both sanskrit hindi tamil and all of them share 25% of common words among them, he singled out only south indian languages as different from north deliberately to link dravidianism to early cristianity which is very apparent in his works.
you can find caldwell’s works here from british archives
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.280976
Dravidian political ideology doesn’t originate from an indigenous reformation movement, instead it took roots from the colonial Indology and separatist theory coined by Bishop Robert Caldwell an evangelist (belong to society for propagation of gospel SPG) who started christianizing Tamil literature by mapping tamil to biblical framework:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTgHiLisedU
It took almost about 100 years to create the Dravdian identity in which the core idea portrays all the north indians as cunning Aryan Brahmins who invaded the indigenous Tamils and imposed Hinduism on them, where the native tamil people where actually more motheistic.
Aravindan neelakandan explains about this colonial project in tamil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5R9yVIOpnk
EVR Periyar took this cause further in his shoulders and founded Dravidian movement which turned to be a major twist in the political history of south india.
Dravidianism not only continued to apply this lens on tamil traditions but also managed to convinced the majority by portraying themselves as the saviours of the Tamil language.
It took Thirukural as an authority (even though thirukkural displays the same hindu ideas of Dharma Artha Kama – called purusha artha in sanskrit means universal principle and soul of the universe) to deceive tamil people in the name of the Dravidian movement.
Dravidian movement started gaining its momentum during late 1950’s and it went on asking for a separate tamil state called dravida nadu (this is the same case where ever colonial masters go they create an idea of separatin and which eventually ends up in separatism) the most pluralistic and diverse culture can be brought down to this level. then there is no surprise in african hutu/tutsi divide which ended up in genocide of millions of black people.
Father of Aryan divide: Friedrich Max Müller (linguist )
First guy to start the propaganda called “The Aryanism”
Learnt Sanskrit used Aryanism to assert Geraman identity
(what is the need for german identity? : During early 1800 germans were officially declared as barbarians by the fellow europians so german scholors in order to re-assert their identity in acamedics, pseudo-linked sanskrit works translated in german with german philosophy to assert the So called “Aryanism” to establish an identity as the worlds most greatest and oldest civilization.- Deliberate misappropriation)
Motive: To establish German identity during the period when germany was in an identity crisis.
Native: Germany
More details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_M%C3%BCller
Now coming to Sinhalese Tamil divide which also started on the same lines of Dravidianism and colonialism
In the late 18th century after portugese invasion this conflict of Tamil vs Sinhalese started
Srilankan geogoraphy consisted of considerable amount of Buddhist and Hindus in late 18th century.
Srilankan Tamils had a very strong notion of Tamil Shaivism and Lord muruga which can be seen in the works of Arumuka Navalar (19th century) 1822-1879 of srilanka he defended portugese christian conversions in srilanka by asserting tamil shaivist identity in srilanka. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arumuka_Navalar
In those period before portugese arrival to srilanka there was no distinction between Buddhism and hinduism in srilanka similar to indian eco-system of diversity.
This diverse eco system of buddhism and Shiva siddhantham can be only broken if there is a divide and which will eventually pave way for christianity and colonialism to enter the political spectrum of srilanka.
similar to how only tamil specific works removing the hindu elements was given more importance in robert caldwell’s book, there is a book called Yalpana Vaipava Malai which asserts tamil identity more isolating the sinhalees of srilanka was promoted very aggressively by colonial dutch government of srilanka. (the book asserts that jaffna belongs only to tamils because they are natives of that land similar to dravidianism) asserting tamil identity is nothing wrong but by isolating a community which celeberated diversity for centuries became inception for this divide.
similar to dravidianism the voice of Srilankan tamils started raising after independence asking for a separate tamil nation which started a huge war among tamils and sinhalees in the late 1980’s which lead to the burning of Yazhpanam library and militancy of tamils in jafna and conversion of hindus to christianity.
All these facts are well documented in a book called Recolonisation: Foreign Funded NGOs in Sri Lanka this book details on how the foreign funded ngo’s actually fuel the fire in srilanka to divide them ethinically.
How many of you know that kudamkulam conflict in tamilnadu was funded by church against the interests of Russia?
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-kerala/churches-back-kudankulam-stir/article4122068.ece
Its just a hatred and war from the vague point of view but its a colonial legacy and conquest of native land by vested foreign interests from a deeper perspective.
Harish KR 