Gosh, yes. The Sri Lankan civil war. That was a bit of a rum do, wasn't it? Basically, light-coloured dark chaps against dark-coloured dark chaps as far as I could make out. No idea what they were all so cross about.
I imagine they feel awfully silly these days having got themselves into such a to-do about nothing. Oh, well.
Language, basically. There would be no real problem between Hindus and Buddhists under normal circs - Buddha is the 10th incarnation of Vishnu, after all.
But when the Tamils were forced to speak Sinhalese, they got the hump and started blowing things up, including poor old Rajiv.
But it's the lingo - think Belgium but with a much better understanding of the Divine and more bombs.