Sri Lankan state-sponsored colonization schemes is the government program of settling mostly Sinhalese farmers from the densely populated wet zone into the sparsely populated areas of the dry zone. This has taken place since the 1950s near tanks and reservoirs being built in major irrigation and hydro-power programs such as the Mahaweli project.
Sinhala Buddhist nationalists within the Sri Lankan government, Buddhist clergy and Mahaweli department have deliberately targeted the Tamil majority northeast for state sponsored Sinhala colonisation, with the explicit intention to take the land into "Sinhala hands" away from the Tamils, and to disrupt the Tamil-speaking continuity between the north and east. This resulted in a significant demographic shift, with the resettled farmers contributing to an increase in the Sinhalese population in the northeast dry zone, thus promoting Sinhala-Buddhist hegemony in the area. Sinhalese settlers were provided with preferential access to land by the state in these regions, whilst the local Tamil speaking people were excluded from this privilege, making them minorities in their own lands. Whilst empowering Sinhalese settlers, the scheme also served as a means to marginalize, exclude, and harm Tamil speaking minorities, treating them as the 'other'. It has been perhaps the most immediate cause of inter-communal violence, with violent displacement of Tamil civilians to make way for Sinhalese settlers occurring several times. The University Teachers for Human Rights has described this as ethnic cleansing of Tamils occurring with the support of the government since the 1956 Gal Oya riots.
Introduction
Shortly after independence, the government of Ceylon started a program to settle farmers in the jungles of the Trincomalee District. The forests were cleared and water tanks restored. As a consequence of these schemes the Sinhalese population of the Trincomalee District rose from 15,706 (21%) in 1946 to 85,503 (33%) in 1981. In the 1980s the government extended the colonization schemes into the Dry Zone area of the Northern Province, drawing up plans to settle up to 30,000 Sinhalese in the area. Colonization schemes also took place in the areas of Ampara and Batticaloa districts. The Sinhalese population rose from 31,107 in 1953 in the combined Batticaloa and Amparai Districts to 157,017 in 1981, an increase far in excess of the natural projected growth.
The notion of the "traditional Tamil homeland" became a potent component of popular Tamil political imagination while the Sinhalese nationalist groups viewed the resettlement schemes in these areas as "reclamation and recreation in the present of the glorious Sinhalese Buddhist past". The Muslim community tended to reject the countervailing notion of a traditional Tamil homeland in the North East region which resulted in animosity between the Muslim and Tamil communities in the region to rise.
1950s
The first colonisation scheme was in the Gal Oya Valley in the Batticaloa District in 1952. Tens of thousands of Sinhalese peasants from the Kegalle and Kandy districts who suffered from land hunger were given fertile land in the upstream end of Gal Oya. A minority of Tamils and Muslims were also given land in the region. Gal Oya would later be the site of the first major anti-Tamil riot in 1956. Gate Mudaliyar Mohammed Samsudeen Kariapper commented on the effects of this predominant Sinhala colony:
"In the past, for so many centuries, the community I come from has been the majority community in the Gal Oya Valley, but today by a process of operations carried on by the Gal Oya Development Board and the Provincial Administration, we the Muslims feel that we in our homeland are being reduced to a minority."
The next colonisation scheme was at Kantale (Kanthalai) tank where peasants from outside of the Trincomalee District were settled in the then Tamil dominant village of Kantale (Kanthalai), 39 km south-west of the Trincomalee town. 77% of settlers were Sinhalese and the rest were Tamils and Muslims.
A colonisation scheme was at the areas surrounding the Kantale Tank, 25 km south of Trincomalee town. 65% of settlers were Sinhalese and the rest were Muslims.
The colonisation scheme was extended to Tamil speaking areas of Anuradhapura District. A scheme was started at Padaviya Tank (Pathavik Kulam), 65 km north-east of Anuradhapura town. Parts of the scheme lay in Trincomalee District but were administered by the Sinhalese majority Anuradhapura District. Land Development Department employees from this scheme took part in the 1958 anti-Tamil riots.