The Tamil ethnic group of Sri Lanka have always competed with the Sinhalese ethnic group in some way, but only recently (1940's) has that competition begun to include politics. This political competition started due to political parties being formed for ethnic reasons rather than national ones. Tamils make up a much smaller percentage of Sri Lanka than Sinhalese do, so laws began to be made that ignored the rights of the Tamil community. The law that had the most impact was the one that outlawed of the Tamil language. Tamils saw this act not only as an oppression of their culture and religion, but also as a way to cut their involvement in government actions. The majority Tamil party, the Federal Party, encouraged Tamils to start a non-violent civil campaign. This was met by violent riots from the Sinhalese. The oppression of Tamil culture and rejection Tamil interests continued to increase until the early 1970's when Tamil groups began to form, each trying different ways to gain independence(Richards, Joanne, An Institutional History of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) http://graduateinstitute.ch/files/live/sites/iheid/files/sites/ccdp/shared/Docs/Publications/CCDP-Working-Paper-10-LTTE-1.pdf.
LTTE Origin
Many groups were formed, but the most successful and widely known of the groups were the ones that used violence, like arson and political assassinations. The Tamil New Tigers were the most prominent of these early terrorist groups, and they later formed into the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE (Stanford Mapping Militant Organizations) https://web.stanford.edu/group/mappingmilitants/cgi-bin/groups/view/225. The LTTE promised to fight to create a new country called Tamil Eelam, where Tamils could speak their language and worship in peace.
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