Vellalar is caste found in Sri Lanka, who comprise about 50% of the Sri Lankan Tamil population. They were traditionally mostly involved in agriculture and trade, but also included chieftains and temple patrons. They also form part of the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora.
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Origins
The Sri Lankan Vellalars share common origins with the Vellalars of India. The earliest reference to the Vellala is attested in the Tolkāppiyam. The Sri Lankan Tamil Vellalar identity arose from those who migrated from the neighbouring Tamil Nadu state in India in the 13th century with a high social standing.
According to Yalpana Vaipava Malai, a native chronicle, written in the 18th century, which narrates the history of the establishment and the fall of the Jaffna kingdom in Sri Lanka, from its rise in the 13th century to its fall in the early 17th century, many Vellalar chiefs from Tamil Nadu were responsible for organizing settlement groups from India into the Jaffna peninsula. Most of these pioneering families had titles associated with clan chiefs such as "Rayan", Thevan", "Mudali", "Mappanan" and "Malavan".
Rise to dominance
According to Bryan Pfaffenberger, an American anthropologist who has studied the community in detail, the rise to complete dominance by the Vellala elites began with the capture of Portuguese holdings in Sri Lanka by the Dutch. The Dutch interpreted the local laws, later codified as Thesavalamai, as allowing Vellala chiefs to own slaves. Thus the Saiva Vellalar chiefts had the Nalavars, Pallars, Paraiyars, Vannans and Ambattans worked under them under the term panchamar ("the fives"), who were treated as the "untouchables".
This new-found wealth enabled the Vellalas in general to morph into a dominant landowning elite with ritual and political control. Eventually their portion of the total Tamil population of the densely populated Jaffna peninsula rose from a mere 8% to over 50%. Upwardly mobile families of people belonging to other castes also eventually assimilated with the Vellala identity according to the principles of Sanskritisation. This period also saw the dispersal of Vellala lineages across the Northern and Eastern Provinces of Sri Lanka.
During the British colonial period in Sri Lanka which began with the capture of the entire island nation and its unification by Great Britain in 1815, Vellalas began to look for education as the new opportunity to upgrade their livelihoods. Various Christian missionaries had made the Tamil-dominated Jaffna peninsula as the best location in all of Asia for English education in the 19th century. Many Vellala families used this opportunity to educate their children, and they provided the bulk of the British colonial civil servants in Sri Lanka and in British-held Malaysia and Singapore. Slavery was also abolished in 1855 by the British colonial authorities, thus making agriculture less profitable. The domination of Sri Lankan Tamils in government services in post independent Sri Lanka eventually became one of the route causes of the Sri Lankan civil war.
Modern social standing
A wide range of communities claim Vellalar ancestry today, with many pretenders from other castes, yet the greatest proportion of Vellalars in Sri Lanka are claimed to have derived from ancient South Indian aristocracy.
Vellala political and ritual dominance was severely restricted due to the post-1983 Sri Lankan civil war domination of Tamil politics by the main rebel group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam whose leaders were of the Karaiyar caste. They sought to weaken the caste system. LTTE's policies of anti-castism and empowerment of formerly "low" castes were presented by them as a part of the political struggle between the majority Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan government and itself which claimed an "exclusive" Tamil identity and homeland.
However, this was not universally applied in practice. Many who were "lower" in caste to the leadership were treated poorly, and some "low castes" were suspected of being government informers and done away by hanging them from lamp posts. The rift between the LTTE leader and Karuna Amman, the leader of the Eastern province, is believed to have a caste dimension as well, since the Northerners always held that they were superior to those in the East The "Vellarar" civilians who collaborated with the LTTE were accepted and continued to hold high positions in temples and churches. In fact, according observations by Ahilan Kadirgamar and Rajasingham Narendran regarding the "depressed classes" (i.e., those traditionally labeled as the "lower" castes) in the post-LTTE era, "there is no organized movement to improve their educational, lifestyle and cultural status", and old prejudices are coming back. The dominance of the Vellalar caste is entrenched into the socio-economic fabric due to their strong historical upper-class position, land-owner composition of the Tamil National Alliance, as well as the occupations they hold. Furthermore, they continue to retain their composition of traditional Hindus, both in Sri Lanka and abroad.