In a major reconciliatory move, Sri Lankan President Mathripala Sirisena will be sending a circular to all institutions saying that there is no bar on singing the Lankan national anthem in Tamil, the New Indian Express said on Wednesday (18).

He will thus be lifting an unofficial ban existing since 2010, when President Mahinda Rajapaksa let it be known that government will frown on singing the anthem in Tamil. Schools and other institutions, which were using the Tamil version of “Sri Lanka Matha, Apa Sri Lanka” since 1951, stopped doing so.

Sirisena announced his decision to lift the language bar when the leader of the Democratic Peoples’ Front (DPF), Mano Ganeshan, raised the issue at the National Executive Council (NEC) meeting here on Tuesday.  

“The President said that he would send a circular saying that there is no ban on singing the national anthem in Tamil. He also said that he would have the matter cleared by the National Security Council,” Ganeshan told Express.

It was in 1951 that newly independent Lanka adopted Shantiniketan-trained Ananda Samarakoon’s  Sinhalese-language song  “Sri Lanka Matha,  Apa Sri Lanka” as the national anthem.

Simultaneously,  a Tamil version, “Sri Lanka Thaaye Nam Sri Lanka”, composed by the Lankan Tamil poet, M.Nallathambi, was also adopted. For decades, both versions were sung, although only the Sinhalese version had constitutional sanction.   

But the victory of the Lankan armed forces over the Tamil Tigers in 2009, resulted in Sinhalese-nationalist parties like the National Freedom Front (NFF) and the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) demanding a ban on the Tamil version on the ground that countries sanction use of only one language for singing the national anthem.

On December 12, 2010, Home Minister W.D.John Senewiratne introduced a cabinet paper to officially disallow singing the anthem in Tamil. President Rajapaksa, who headed the cabinet, did not officially commit himself to Senewiratne’s proposal, but word went around that his government did not favor the use of the Tamil version. In the Tamil areas, the Security Forces insisted on the use of the Sinhalese version only. The Tamils’ argument that in several countries, including Canada and South Africa, the anthem is sung in different languages, fell on deaf ears.