Sri Lanka, Jan. 21 -- The Dutch Burgher community is dwindling at present with the vast increase in migration and inter marriages taking place. Further, with racist ideologies rising once more, the future for the minorities seem bleak

The descendants of the European servants of the Dutch East India Company and Mestico women and native women ( Sinhalese and Tamil) became known as 'Dutch Burghers'

If the legal formula of racial mother tongue was applied to these ethnic groups, the mother tongues of Muslim, Burgher and Malay children would respectively be Arabic, Portuguese/ Dutch/English and Malay

"We are a vanishing tribe in Sri Lanka. The first paternal ancestor of my father's family who arrived in Sri Lanka in 1774 was Pieter Schareng...