Comments by "K `" (@user-jt3dw6vv4x) on "Complete History of Sri Lanka" video.

This is why Sri Lanka isn't progressing because a lot of you think this way. If you don't know, the plantation workers are Tamils of Indian origin brought over during the colonial rule. So of course the majority is going to be Tamil and so what if there was a Muslim girl? The girl is Malay and Malays and Sri Lankan Moors are some of the main minority groups in Sri Lanka. Stop making everything about religion and ethnicity.
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@user-ll6pr5cw1f Sinhalese or broadly speaking Sri Lankan culture/people are not "Desi". "Desi" means Indian (especially North Indian), Pakistani and Bangladeshi. Sri Lanka has nothing to do with that. In terms of cultural connections to other parts of South Asia, Sri Lanka is closest to South India (Tamil Nadu and Kerala).
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@user-ll6pr5cw1f Sinhalese isn't from North India though. It's a Sri Lankan language.
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@user-ll6pr5cw1f Sinhalese is not spoken in India, it's spoken in Sri Lanka and thus a Sri Lankan language. Also, let's not forget the fact that there is a lot of Tamil influence in the language. The language is really a product of its context. The closest Indo-European language to Sinhalese is Dhivehi and they even sound the same. The Indo-European languages of India however sound very different and they don't have the Tamil influence either.
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@user-ll6pr5cw1f How can you say that Sinhalese nationalism is only to do with Buddhism? Language is the whole reason why Sinhalese nationalism is even a thing. Why? It's because the Sinhala Only Act implemented by the Sinhalese-dominated government. I don't think you understand Sri Lankan history if you believe that. Sinhalese nationalism began to develop during the colonial era. The British created this idea that Sinhalese are "Aryans" and Tamils are "Dravidians" in order to divide the population of the island. That is one of the contributing factors to nationalism in the country. The Tamils and Sinhalese believed the British and both groups tried to counteract each other by judging each other. The Tamil nationalists claimed they were superior because they were "pure" whereas they claimed the Sinhalese were inferior because they were "mixed", having formed through the mixing of Indo-Aryans, Dravidians, Malay, Vedda and Mongoloid people, which is what they claimed. The Sinhalese nationalists claimed the Tamils were inferior because they were "Dravidian" and not "Aryan". The whole thing is rooted in ethnicity, language and outdated pseudo-racial terms. Nowadays, the pseudo-racial terms don't play a role but language still does.
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@sajeevanyoga4360 Wrong.
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@RM-yf2lu That's not correct. If we look at pop culture, which is one of the main factors of influence on contemporary culture, many people in Sri Lanka watch local films/shows, Bollywood films, South Indian films and Korean dramas and follow those trends. People are more in touch with the rest of Asia than they are with anything outside of it. When I was in Sri Lanka, I couldn't find a single Western show on local TV - it was just local shows or Sinhalese-dubbed Indian, Korean and Chinese TV dramas. Then I asked my grandpa and he told me that American shows aren't broadcast on local TV as often as they were in the 1990s. In the late 1990s, Indian shows became popular and then in the late 2000s, Korean shows became popular. Most people nowadays prefer Indian and Korean shows.
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@realrhetoric The right thing to do would be to let the past be the past. By trying to "right" the "wrongs" of the past, they ruined the peaceful race relations that existed during the ancient times. This is why Sri Lanka failed at becoming another Asian Tiger economy because it failed to manage its ethnic diversity properly. Same thing happened to Malaysia, the Malay leaders wanted to "right" the "wrongs" because the Chinese and Tamils were privileged in colonial Malaya. The difference is that Malaysia has made significant strides after seeing its southern neighbour become developed.
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@realrhetoric The Malay-dominated government of Malaysia expelled Singapore from the country due to severely strained relations between the Malays and Chinese in 1965. Singapore never wanted to gain independence but due to their expulsion, the Singaporeans put aside their differences and created an equal nation for Chinese, Malays and Tamils. Yes Bandaranaike is the root of the problem and did not think of the future. What would have been the right thing to do would have been to cultivate a shared identity as Sri Lankans, made English the lingua franca of the country in order to allow every group to be on the same page. Making minorities learn Sinhalese is unfair to the minorities because the Sinhalese already have an advantage. You can already see how mixed Sri Lankan culture is at a basic level whether that's in the capital or in the towns and rural areas. I've heard stories of Muslims cleaning and taking care of Buddhist roadside shrines and there are Sinhalese in Hambantota who speak in Malay with the Sri Lankan Malays due to the Malay impact in that region.
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@realrhetoric I respectfully disagree. There's no truce in Singapore. The country is the most successful multi-ethnic country in Asia. The four founding fathers of modern Singapore are all ethnically diverse, comprising people of Chinese, Peranakan and Tamil descent. It was a Tamil man that created the framework for Singapore's modern policies surrounding ethnic equality. If anything, it is the Malays that are disadvantaged in comparison to the Chinese and Indians and the government is aware of this. The Chinese and Tamils on the other hand have had it better and traditionally speaking they are the ones that have been in control of the Singaporean government even before Singapore gained independence from Malaysia. A major survey in 2018 in Singapore revealed most people believe that income inequality/class position is the most likely cause for discrimination in the country and not race or religion, illustrating how attitudes of the general public had changed in the past 53 years.
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Absolutely not, they're their own people with their own history and own culture.
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Except DNA is not the same. Kabul is a totally different area, they're Central Asian in genetics not South Asian.
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