American Ceylon Mission
During this time, they engaged in original translations from English to Tamil, printing, and publishing, establishing primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions and providing health care for residents of the Jaffna Peninsula.
They also led to the attainment of a lopsided literacy level among residents in the relatively small peninsula that is cited by scholars as one of the primary factors contributing to the recently ended civil war.
Many notable educational and health institutions within the Jaffna Peninsula owe their origins to the missionary activists from America.
After the defeat and death of the last king Cankili II in 1619, most prominent Hindu temples were razed to the ground and restrictions on observance of native religious rituals were instituted.
Local laws such as Thesavalamai were codified during this period, and the history of the previous Jaffna Kingdom under the name of Yalpana Vaipava Malai was put to print.
Although he spent most of his career in India, particularly Bombay he was instrumental in starting up the American missionary involvement in Jaffna.
Missionaries also made efforts to provide collegiate level education by founding the Batticota Seminary at Vaddukoddai in 1823 with Rev.
[11] He and his wife Harriet had 6 surviving sons and 2 daughters who all became medical missionaries and worked in South India.
[12] Dr. Scudder was followed by Dr. Nathan Ward in 1836, who was replaced in 1846 by Dr. Samuel Fisk Green, who began a thirty-year medical practice and training program.
Under him the American congregational missionaries became the pioneers of formal English and Tamil education in northern Sri Lanka.
Although the initial aim was to convert Hindus to Christianity, it came to impart Biblical, English and European sciences on par with New England community colleges.
[15] The seminary undertook to research and published pioneering books in the Tamil language in local literature, logic, algebra, astronomy and general science.
Dr. Sabapathy Kulendran, the first bishop of the Jaffna Diocese of the Church of South India (JDCSI) observed that the "seminary brought about a tremendous upsurge the like of which has never been seen in the country before or after."
Eventually, due to financial reasons, the seminary began to collect an entrance fee; thus, only wealthy families were able to send their children for education.
The primary purpose of these families was to assure that their children received a European standard education without converting to Christianity.
Although American involvement continues to the current day in missionary activities, the critical age of transformation ended with the turn of the 20th century.
According to N. Sabaratnam a prominent editor of Eelanadu newspaper, "At the dawn of the 19th century the American Missionaries came to Jaffna to preach Christian Gospel, but in actual fact they propagated the ideals of a new nation, pulsating with life"With the amalgamation of North Ceylon Missions into the Church of South India (CSI), most properties and existing educational institutions are managed by the CSI.
[19] Sinhalese leaders saw this imbalance as a problem that needed rectifying, and introduced discriminatory laws such as the 1956 Sinhala Only Act and the policy of standardization.
These measures deteriorated the already frail political relationship between the communities and many experts believe it as one of the main causes of the Sri Lankan Civil War.
