He wrote: "I have more than a ‘soft corner’ for the Tamils as well as the other communities in Sri Lanka and I respect them as citizens of the country."  He went further to explain that "Of course, I have no hesitation in stating that the Sinhala Buddhist culture is the significant culture of the country, not the dominant culture". Prof N de S could bridge the gap in understanding between the communities if he could explain his thinking to the Sinhala masses in the Sinhala media. That would go a long way in bringing the estranged communities to think afresh.

At the same time I am uncertain whether his following statement has any validity: He wrote: "Tamils in Sri Lanka do not have a continuous history going back to a date before the 17th century." During the Dutch period in the island’s history there was the tobacco trade between Malabar and Sri Lanka. What was termed "Malabar" by foreigners was the southernmost regions in the then Tamil Nadu which included the present southern districts of Kerala. Perhaps people from such regions speaking Tamil and Malayalam came in great number in the 17th century. And they become either Tamilians or Sinhalas depending on what region they settled in.

But Thamilans and other Dravidians had lived in Lanka even before the 7th century as could learnt from the Tamil Bhakthi literature. There is one other point where I disagree with Prof N de S. He says, "The close relationship between Tamil spoken in Jaffna and Chennai or in Madurai has to be understood."

I am afraid this is not so. The Tamil spoken in Chennai is a hybrid  kind of Tamil (a hodge-podge colloquial mixture of different tongues) And in Mathurai, Tamil speech is strongly influenced by Telugu. In fact Yaalpaanam and Mattakkalappu spoken Tamil has closer affinity to the Tamil spoken in southern districts like Nagarkovil, Thirunelvely and even Thoothukudi in Tamil Nadu and Thirivanathapuram in Kerala. The Lankan king Deva Nambia Tissa is known in Tamil as Theva Nambia Theesan and not "Thesam" as Prof N de S says. The name means, one who believed in Deva (God).