Source
Statelessness in Sri Lanka, UNHCR 2007.

Opinion

“It effectively solved the problem of statelessness amongst Hill Tamils in Sri Lanka. Those de facto stateless persons who held Indian passports (acquired under one of the previous citizenship agreements) but had remained in Sri Lanka, were required to sign a “special declaration” stating their intention to voluntarily acquire Sri Lankan citizenship and thus rescind their right to Indian citizenship (as no dual nationality is permitted). In cases of de jure statelessness, where individuals possessed neither an Indian or a Sri Lankan passport, no written declaration was required.” UNHCR 2007.

Related events
15 November 1948
1949
29 October 1964
1982
1988

Source
Statelessness in Sri Lanka, UNHCR 2007.

Quotation

“However, in 2003 there were still an estimated 300,000 stateless persons of Indian origin living in Sri Lanka…Without citizenship they were denied the right to vote, own state land, open a bank account or benefit from official employment; they were also unable to obtain documents such as a passport, national ID, or birth certificate.” UNHCR 2007.

Related events
15 November 1948
1949
29 October 1964
1982
October 2003

Source
Statelessness in Sri Lanka, UNHCR 2007.

Related events
15 November 1948
1949
29 October 1964
1974
1988

Source
Statelessness in Sri Lanka, UNHCR 2007.

Quotations

“In actual fact, 506,000 people applied for Indian Citizenship and 470,000 applied for Sri Lankan citizenship (greatly exceeding the stipulated number of 375,000).” UNHCR 2007.

“I have been witness to one of the cruellest chapters in this saga which saw the marginalising, pauperisation and death of the almost 750,000 repatriates (people of Indian origin) from Sri Lanka during the ’70s and the ’80s. In two phases, under the Shastri-Sirimavo Pact of 1964 and the Indira-Sirimavo Pact of 1974, three-quarter of a million ‘stateless people’ of Sri Lanka — the descendents of the 19th and early 20th century indentured labourers to the tea plantations – were lock-stock-and barrel repatriated to Tamil Nadu in one of the most infamous instances of human engineering in recent times. The reception they had from fellow-Tamils was less than human. It has been documented that they were rapidly dispossessed of their meagre belongings. A few found ‘jobs’ in the exploitative special ‘rehabilitation’ schemes created by the state government. A conservative estimate by a fact-finding team surmised that at least 25% died within the first three years of landing in India, of starvation. It is a memory that cannot be erased.” (Sadanand Menon, Who speaks on behalf of Lanka’s Tamils? Business Standard, 17 October 2008)

Related events
15 November 1948
1949
29 October 1964
1982
1988

Earlier, under the 1954 Nehru-Kotelawala Pact, India agreed in principle to accept the repatriation of Tamils of Indian origin who wanted Indian citizenship, but did not accept the Sri Lankan position that all those who do not qualify for Sri Lankan citizenship should automatically be given Indian citizenship. The Sirima-Shastri Pact was perceived as a breakthrough.

Sources
Statelessness in Sri Lanka, UNHCR 2007; Exit, an elder stateswoman, DBS Jeyaraj, Frontline, Volume 17 – Issue 17, Aug. 19 – Sep. 01, 2000; Witness to History: A Journalist’s Memoirs, S. Sivanayagam, 2005.

Quotations

“Felix Dias Bandaranaike said in the House of Representatives that as far the Ceylon was concerned, there were no stateless people in the country. There were only two categories of citizens – Ceylonese or Indian. If they qualify for Ceylon citizenship under the law, they were obviously Indian citizens. The remedy for those who were refused Indian citizenship was to seek a writ of mandamus on Indian government officials. That would have to be decided by the Supreme Court of India (Hansard, 31 August 1963).” Witness to History, S. Sivanayagam 2005.

“It is an unprecedented move in international relations for half a million people to be treated as pawns in the game of power politics.” SJV Chelvanagakam, 1964.

“A creditable accomplishment was her resolving the contentious issue of “statelessness” of plantation workers of Indian origin living in the central highlands of the island, estimated at 975,000. The accord with her Indian counterpart, Lal Bahadur Shastri, in 1964 provided for India taking 525,000 such people, and Sri Lanka 300,000, leaving a residue of 150,000. Known as the Sirima-Shastri Pact, it was hailed as a diplomatic breakthrough.” DBS Jeyaraj, Frontline, 2000.

Principal terms of the Sirima-Shastri pact (Indo-Ceylon Agreement of 1964)
1. The declared objective of this agreement is that all persons of Indian origin in Ceylon who have not been recognized as citizens of Ceylon or as citizens of India should become citizens of either of Ceylon or of India.”

2. The number of such persons is approximately 975,000 as of date. This figure does not include illicit immigrants and Indian passport holders.

3. 300,000 of these persons, together with the natural increase in that number will be granted Ceylon citizenship buthe Government of Ceylon; the Government of India will accept repatriation of 525,000 of these persons together with the natural increase in that number. The Indian Government will confer citizenship on these persons.

4. The status and future of the remaining 150,000 of these persons will be the subject of a separate agreement between the two governments.

5. The Indian government will accept repatriation of the persons to be repatriated within a period of 15 years from the date of this agreement, according to a programme as evenly phased as possible.

Related events
15 November 1948
1949
1974
1982
1988

Related events
19 February 1958
April 1958
9 April 1958
May 1958
27 May 1958

1949 also saw the passage of the Indian and Pakistani Residents Act, which provided for a seven year (for married persons) or ten year (for single persons) uninterrupted residence in Sri Lanka and set an income level in order to qualify for citizenship. These requirements impacted negatively on the plantation Tamils, many of whom had periodically returned to Tamil Nadu and did not have the documents to prove uninterrupted residence. Most of them were unable also to meet the income qualification.

Source
Statelessness in Sri Lanka, UNHCR 2007.

Related events
15 November 1948
29 October 1964
1974
1982
1988

Quotation

“…to work unceasingly for the achievement of a Tamil state within the Federal framework of a united Ceylon, as the only way to ensure that the Tamil-speaking people in Ceylon could live with honour and self-respect.” Resolution of S.J.V. Chelvanayakam, inaugural meeting of the Federal Party, held at the Government Clerical Service Union hall at Maradana.

Opinion
“[The resolution] came as a marked departure in Tamil thinking. Thoughts on the idea of separation [had] of course been aired by individuals now and then, but those came to nothing. That maverick politician C. Suntharalingam who represented in parliament the frontier Tamil electorate in Vavuniya could be considered the father of the Tamil Eelam concept (he spelled it ‘Eylom’), but as a mere general without an army the Tamils never took him seriously. Professor A.J. Wilson in his political autobiography of S.J.V Chelvanayakam refers to an instance years earlier – in 1936 – when two Tamils, Dr S. Ponniah, a mayor in the Ceylon defence force and a notary of Vadamarachchy named Vallipurunathan had sent a petition to Britain requesting a separate state for the Tamils. They had shown Chelvanayakam (who was not an active politician then) the draft of the petition to elicit his views.” From Witness to History: A Journalist’s Memoirs (1930- 2004), S. Sivanayagam, 2005.

Related events
700,000 Indian origin plantation Tamils become stateless persons
‘Bandaranaike–Chelvanayagam Pact’ signed
‘Anti Sri’ campaign launched

Photography courtesy of the International Labour Organization (ILO).

Extract from the multimedia piece, To Escape or Maximise? The estate worker’s dilemma. Produced by the Centre for Poverty Analysis (CEPA) and based on their study Changes and Tensions in the Tea and Rubber Plantations of Sri Lanka (2008). The trailer can be viewed at http://cepa.lk/estates.

Sources
Statelessness in Sri Lanka, UNHCR 2007; Changes and Tensions in the Tea and Rubber Plantations of Sri Lanka (2008)

Quotation

“This Act provided citizenship to people born before 15 November 1948 but required that two generations of the person’s family had been born in Sri Lanka. This essentially discriminated against Hill Tamils, many of whom returned to Tamil Nadu to give birth and most of whom could no produce documents to prove two generations of family born in Sri Lanka,” UNHCR, 2007.

“Today justice is being denied to the Indian Tamils. Some day in the future when language becomes and issue, the same fate would befall the Ceylon Tamils. It is therefore necessary that we oppose this Bill unitedly,” S.J.V. Chelvanayakam, Parliamentary Debates, Hansard, 10 December 1948.

Related events
18 December 1948
1949
29 October 1964
1974
1982
1988