Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in India, the nowhere people
The HinduDefying logic, two communities of SriLankan Tamils have been left out of the ambit of the Citizenship Bill : the plantation Tamils, who have roots in India and were forcibly relocated to Sri Lanka by the British as indentured labourers, and the Sri Lankan Tamil refugees living in India. The Sri Lankan Tamils in refugee camps tick one more box; many have lived in Tamil Nadu for at least a decade and a half. It would have been better if the Central government had included Sri Lankan Tamils also in the ambit of the Bill.” There is unanimity among political parties in Tamil Nadu on the question of Sri Lankan Tamils’ rights, but there still appears to be ambiguity over the various classes of Tamils in Sri Lanka. A key problem that led to this simple case of repatriation metamorphosing into a case of forced migration was the Sri Lankan act of tweaking the accord, which, despite being flagged, the Government of India refused to interfere with and set right: “The biggest mistake the Indian government made in 1964 was to link not merely their acceptance as Indian citizens but also repatriation to India to the granting of citizenship in this country,” S. Thondaman, the late leader of Indian Tamils in Sri Lanka, told N. Ram.