2018 Theses Master's

Tamil Eelam: Inevitably a Dream? Tamil Nationalism and the Right to Self-Determination

Sivanayagam, Shibanee

This thesis seeks to examine the compatibility between political demands associated with Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka over the 20th century and what the international community was prepared to grant. It does this by simultaneously examining the contiguous stories of Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka and the right to self-determination more generally over the course of the 20th century and up until the early 21st century, when the Sri Lankan civil war ended. It divides the time period into 3 sections to simultaneously compare the evolution of Tamil nationalism and transformation of the right to self-determination. It concludes that the demands associated with Tamil nationalism have, throughout the 20th century and early 21st century, always been incompatible with what the West was prepared to give them.