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Research Journal of the University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka- Rohana 11, 2019
The violent activities that primarily emerged from the beginning of 1970 were
mainly centred on two places of different social backgrounds – one in the Jaffna
University and the other in Valvettithurai (VVT), a fishing village in the North of
the Jaffna peninsula, well-known as a hotspot for smuggling of goods from India
(Stokke, 2006). The violence prone youth from the Jaffna University were mostly
Science and Mathematics educated unemployed graduates. Most of them were from
the Jaffna high caste (Vellalah) families. However, VVT became a hotbed of violent
activities in the 1970s long before the Jaffna University. The reason was mainly
because VVT was already well established as a popular location for underworld
activities. Many of the smugglers were also engaged in gun running and a variety of
other illegal trades. Therefore, an unusually high number of military personalities
had been stationed there. This scenario created the perfect background to create
tension between the military forces and the Tamils. Mostly, the militant youth from
VVT had only a basic level of education due to being affected by caste injustices
and a bad socio-economic setup. They strongly espoused radicalism and violence.
Gradually they became the dominant force in society by exceeding the strength of
the Vellalah based radical group from the Jaffna University.
As pointed out earlier, the Sri Lankan Tamil militant movement emerged due to a
number of grievances the youth harboured. Among those reasons was the frustration
felt by the Tamil youth in Jaffna in the 1970s as a result of relative deprivation, and
this can be identified as a powerful factor. Relative deprivation related frustrations
influenced the Tamil youth in two different ways. First, the lower caste Tamil youth
deeply resented the Vellalah caste hegemony and the resultant injustices their people
had endured during the course of the past several hundred years. Even in the 1970s
this situation proved highly detrimental to the lower castes. Particularly, the Tamil
youth of VVT were badly deprived because of the injustices of the caste system.
Caste System in the Tamil Society
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