People who believe in Tamil homeland may be interested in the systematic research done by a Tamil scholar Dr Karthigesu Indrapalan. Here, 'systematic' means that his research was in accordance with widely accepted methodology of conducting research and accepted by University of London. This study is unpublished due to obvious reasons. His findings clearly show that Tamils indeed came to Sri Lanka from India and permanently settled in the island after 12th century. In next few posts, we will include few excerpts from his PhD dissertation.
Dr. Karthigesu Indrapala, a Sri Lankan Tamil, had his early education in Jaffna and later joined the academic staff of the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya, in the late fifties after obtaining a Honours Degree in History from the same University.
In 1965 he was awarded the PhD by the University of London, for his research on "Dravidian Settlements in Ceylon and the beginnings of the Jaffna Kingdom", which he did at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).
The choice and approval of this subject was based on the fact that no reliable research had been done on the Dravidian/South Indian migrations to SriLanka before the tenth century. On his return to Sri Lanka Indrapala was appointed to the academic staff of the History Department of the Jaffna campus. When the substance of his thesis regarding early Dravidian settlements came to be known from his lectures, talks and articles, he became very unpopular with the Tamil extremists and non-academic Tamil historians. Itis probably for this reason that he left the University and migrated to Australia, and it is also why this valuable thesis remains unpublished.
Non-academic Tamil historians such as C Rasanayagam, C S Navaratnam and Fr Gnanapragasar who has written on the Jaffna Kingdom, which emerged in the twelfth century had made unhistorical assumptions of the period before that date based on the early legendary and mythical sections of the Tamil Ylpana Vaipava Malai.
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