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Stateless Persons’: the Repatriation of Estate Tamils of Sri Lanka to India C.1920-80

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Stateless Persons’: the Repatriation of Estate Tamils of Sri Lanka to India C.1920-80 © 2018 JETIR June 2018, Volume 5, Issue 6 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) From ‘British Subjects’ to ‘Stateless Persons’: the Repatriation of Estate Tamils of Sri Lanka to India C.1920-80 Dr. Shyni Danial Independent Research Scholar School of Social Sciences, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala Abstract This paper engages with the issues of citizenship, statelessness and repatriation of estate Tamils of Sri Lanka to India in the period between 1920 and 1980. The study aims to reveal the way in which how Indian immigrant community enjoyed enfranchisement rights in the Colonial Ceylon and the way their political privileges were questioned in the later periods. The nation state formation in South Asia brought new meanings to individual identities and the concept of ‘British subjects’ which ensured various rights to the Tamil immigrants in the Colonial Ceylon became insignificant. The paper goes on to describe the way in which how the estate Tamils had undergone a condition of political uncertainty which finally led to their repatriation to their ancestral regions in South India and the discussions and debates which occurred around their repatriation to India. Key Words ​ ​ Plantation Labour, ethnicity, Citizenship, statelessness, repatriation and rehabilitation. Introduction The development of the plantation economy generated labour migration from South India to Sri Lanka. The labourers who worked on plantation estates were mainly recruited from the colonial Madras presidency, especially from Trichinopoly, Tanjore, Pudukotai, Madurai, Selam, North and South Arcot, Madras and Coimbatore.1 The Tamil labourers were dispersed over all nine provinces in Sri Lanka. In 1930, the colonial government in Sri Lanka noted that 50 to 60 percentage of estate Tamils were born in Sri Lanka and their number was seven lakhs.2 It also stated that the estates Tamils were settled in Sri Lanka although they kept making periodical visits to their home villages in Tamil Nadu. Only a minority of those of Indian origin were located in urban areas where they engaged in semi-skilled work, domestic service and business. 1 Haraprasad Chattopadhyaya. Indians in Sri Lanka: A Historical Study, Calcutta, 1979, p.37. ​ ​ 2 File No 1- 83, 10.10. 1930, Department of Education, Health and Lands, Overseas Branch, National Archives of India. ​ JETIR1806741 Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (JETIR) www.jetir.org 330 ​ © 2018 JETIR June 2018, Volume 5, Issue 6 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) The estate Tamils in Sri Lanka enjoyed different kinds of welfare facilities including housing facilities, education for children, maternity benefits in the case of female workers and minimum wages during the Colonial Period. The colonial Government of Ceylon enacted a number of welfare measures for the immigrant estate population throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their regular periodical visit to villages in South India had reduced surplus labour in the Sri Lankan plantations. The present paper looks at the question of the citizenship and political rights of the persons of Indian origin in Sri Lanka in different periods and their subsequent repatriation to India. It examines the discussions and perceptions which occurred around these questions and the way in which political parties, politicians and the press in India formulated their ideas on the question. The Question of Nationality ​ The question of the identity and rights of estate Tamils in Sri Lanka acquired political significance in the 1930s. In 1930, the colonial government established a commission headed by Donoughmore, to expand the form of representative government which had been initiated in the 1920s. This commission emphasized the need to extend the franchise to all sections in the country including women and estate Tamils.3 The existing system had laid down two qualifications for enfranchisement: a literary test and income criteria. The Donoughmore commission put only one condition for acquiring voting right, i.e., a five-year continuous residence in the country. This political privilege was extended to the estate Tamils within the broader concept of 'British subjects’ which ensured equal rights to the immigrants with the indigenous population. But this suggestion was widely criticised by the Sinhalese politicians, who feared that this would result in the large scale enfranchisement of estate Tamils giving them considerable clout in political life. They claimed that the very fact that persons of Indian origin maintained some contact with their village in Tamil Nadu which proved that their sense of attachment lay with India not Sri Lanka and that therefore they could not be regarded as one of the constituents of its national polity. They pressed the colonial government to drop the simple criteria of a five-year residence in the country, and to use the criteria of domicile to judge the person’s permanent interest in a country. They wanted a clear distinction to be made between domicile by birth and domicile by choice. Under the pressure of Sinhalese politicians the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) modified the recommendations of the Commission. The voting right was given to estate Tamils on condition that a person would have to possess a certificate from an appointed officer stating that s/he was resident in Sri Lanka for five continuous years. They received the status of 'undomicile’ or domicile by choice even though a substantial proportion were born in Sri Lanka. They had to also make a declaration that they would not depend upon any other country except Ceylon. Nevertheless, as a result of 3 Ibid. ​ JETIR1806741 Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (JETIR) www.jetir.org 331 ​ © 2018 JETIR June 2018, Volume 5, Issue 6 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) this process 1, 00, 000 Tamil-speaking residents in Sri Lanka were admitted into the electoral register in 1931. In the State Council election in 1936, their number increased to 1, 45, 000 and it became 2,25, 000 during the 1939 election.4 Sri Lankans on the other hand were categorised as domiciled by birth. Fearing the increasing participation of the estate Tamils in elections to the State Council, the Sinhalese politicians urged the government to introduce a rigid qualification test for voting right. The colonial government felt that the right to vote would help estate Tamils to improve their economic conditions. But it could not ignore the powerful voice of the Sinhalese political leaders so it adopted a stricter voting test. The effect of this was felt in the State Council election of 1942 in which the number of eligible voters among estate Tamils fell to 1,68, 000.5 In 1939, the Indian National Congress sent Jawaharlal Nehru to enquire into the dismissal of Indian daily-waged labourers from government departments in Sri Lanka. Declaring that the GOSL was not protecting the rights of Indian labourers in Sri Lanka, Government of India (GOI) banned the migration of unskilled labour from India to Sri Lanka. At the same time in 1940-41 GOI also entered into negotiation with Sri Lanka to clarify the political rights of Indians in Sri Lanka. But these negotiations failed to resolve the political predicament of the Indian estate population in Sri Lanka. The colonial government in Sri Lanka did not wish to take the risk of provoking too much political opposition by taking up the rights of Indians in Sri Lanka. It left the issue to the future decisions of the new Government in Sri Lanka. 6 GOI wanted the Indian emigration Act to provide the framework for determining the position of persons of Indian origin in Sri Lanka. It pointed out that under the terms of the Act, labour emigration from India had been permitted only on condition that labourers would have the right to settle permanently in the country and to exercise the same privileges as other inhabitants of the country. On this basis it argued that person of Indian origin should be put on the same political footing as the nationals of Sri Lanka.7 In 1947 GOI had entered into negotiations with GOSL over the principles on which citizenship status was to be defined for persons of Indian origin in Sri Lanka.8 Nehru, the then Prime Minister of India stated that India was ready to accept those estate Tamils who wanted to come to India and claim Indian nationality. At the same time, he also pressed Sri Lanka to liberalize the conditions for claiming citizenship and simplify the registration process for those who wanted to stay there. In particular, Nehru argued the case for those people who had lived in Sri Lanka for three to four generations, stressing both the economic contribution 4 S.U.Kodikara, Indo -Ceylon Relations since Independence ,Colombo, 1965, p.78. 5 Ibid. 6 Chattopadhyaya, Indians in Sri Lanka, pp.210-11. ​ ​ ​ 7P.Sahadevan, India and Overseas Indians: The Case of Sri Lanka,1995, Delhi, 122-23. 8 S.Gopal, eds. Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, New Delhi, Vol.4, 1986, p. 622, Nehru Memorial Museum and ​ Library(here after NMML ), New Delhi. JETIR1806741 Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (JETIR) www.jetir.org 332 ​ © 2018 JETIR June 2018, Volume 5, Issue 6 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) they had made to the country and their sense of attachment to it. He also negotiated the citizenship right for estate Tamils under the emigration rules which guaranteed rights and facilities to Indian immigrants. He stated this to (in) his letter to D.S. Senanayake (1947-1952), the then Prime Minister of Sri Lanka dated on 17.6.1947: One of the conditions for emigration to other countries to which the Government of India have always attached the utmost importance from the very beginning of Indian emigration has been that an emigrant labourer should be given facilities to settle in the country to which he emigrates on equal terms with members of the indigenous population.
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