Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 10:49:35 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re:eelam


To the best of my knowledge: Eelam is the Sri Lankan Tamil name for Sri
Lanka which was later turned into Tamil eelam by the militant nationalists
to denote the "traditional homeland" and now has come to be plain eelam,
maybe in an efffort to inlcude Muslims.
But still journals and writers use Eelam as  Sri Lanka. In fact teh last
time i was in Sri Lanka (last summer, '98) attending a workshop in Tamil,
many used 'writers of Eelam' and to my query they said it meant Tamil
writers in Sri Lanka. Of course this has a very "tamil" language
connotation. there are long standing newspapers dating from the days before
indenpendence that  are called
Eelanadu, Eelanatham (eelaland, Eela voice etc.). many fo them are part of
preindenpendece nationalist phase.   But i dont know where it comes from or
whether it described any particular tamil speaking area earlier.

Also lingustically i dont know what it means.

sumathy




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