The ‘Sinhala Only’ and ‘in 24 hours’ were the populist slogans that popularised Sinhala identity vis-à-vis Tamil identity; this was led to the creation of ‘definitive image of Sinhalese-Buddhist hegemony’ against the fairly modernised and well-educated Tamils in Sri Lanka. The Sinhala Only movement symbolised the emergence of ethnic strife between the Sinhala and Tamil communities. But it was the events of 1983 that finally shaped the discourse of Tamil movement, which assumed a military component leading to a spiral of violence and mass killings in Sri Lanka. The anti-Tamil pogrom in 1983 led to an exodus of Tamils from Sri Lanka to India. India shared a close and strong affinity with the Tamil cause in Sri Lanka, especially given the island’s physical proximity to the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The Tamil refugees entered Tamil Nadu in three waves. The first exodus coincided with events of 1983, which resulted in 134,053 Sri Lankan Tamils seeking asylum in Southern India. Following the Indo-Lankan Accord in 1987, 25,585 refugees returned to Sri Lanka by ship (Suryanarayan & Sudarsen, 2000: 73). The second Eelam war in 1990 resulted in a second wave of refugees, with 122,000 Sri Lankan Tamils entering India. India provided ‘temporary asylum to refugees for whom the only durable solutions as resettlement and voluntary repatriation’. The third Eelam war in 1995 resulted in Tamils from Sri Lanka seeking refuge: by 1999, nearly 20,196 or more had fled the country. The flow of refugees into India was directly linked to the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. By February 2002, 22,331 refugees had fled to India again: this number included 7968 families consisting of 9705 adult males, 8110 females, 2281 male children, and 2235 female children.