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UPROOTED
Plantation Tamils in Sri Lanka
Suppiramaniam Makenthiran
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As a school boy, teacher, accountancy
student and accountant, the author has had the experience of
observing Plantation Tamils in the estates and possesses
intimate knowledge of the squalor, economy and political
conditions in which they have lived. WSN presents this
first-person report which should serve as a primer for the
uninitiated about Sri Lankan affairs. |
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 Living in the central hill part of Sri Lanka, Plantation Tamils, as
they are generally called and mocked at as ‘Indian Tamils’, this
community has been oppressed as chattel by successive Sinhalese
governments since independence of the country in 1948.
In Sri Lanka,
formerly called Ceylon, there are three major communities – the
majority Sinhalese, the minority Tamils and Muslims. In 1948, the
population was about 8 million, of which Sinhalese were 66%, Tamils
26% and Muslims 7%. Tamils were from two regions - the Eelam Tamils
of the coastal
Northeast
Province, and Upcountry Tamils from the central highlands of
Central, Uva and Sabaragamuwa Provinces.
The Northeast Tamils were the original inhabitants of
Ceylon (Eelam or
Ilankai, as known earlier) descending from the great king Ravanan or
Ravaneswaran, the Lord of Lanka. The Sinhalese came to Ceylon in 6th
century B.C, when Prince Vijaya and a few hundred members of his
men, having been banished from North East India, were stranded on
the high seas and landed in Puttalam. As history would have it,
they became powerful and gradually pushed the Tamils to the
Northeast coast. They married local Tamil women and formed the
Sinhala race. The Tamils of Notheast and Central Plantations speak
the same Tamil language and are mostly Hindus. However, they are two
separate communities due to historical factors.
Immigration in the nineteenth century
 Plantation Tamils, also known as Upcountry Tamils were
brought by the British at the beginning of the 19th
century from
South India to work
on plantations. They are different from Eelam Tamils by virture of
their origin but they share ethnicity with them. Similarly other
people of Indian origin, taken by the British as indentured
labourers are found in South Africa, Malaysia, Singapore, Guiyana,
Fiji, West Indies and other places.
The first batch of Tamil labourers came around 1823 from
Tamil Nadu, which was then called Madras Presidency. They have
completed close to two centuries of habitation in
Sri Lanka.
They have toiled on the tea, rubber and coconut plantations.
Appalling
living conditions
Tamil workers migrated as part of an indenture –an agreement
to serve the master, which condemned them to slavery, first of the
British and then of the Sinhalese.
They lived in labor lines like the slave rows in the
United States.
Each family was given a room and large families of ten or twelve
children were crammed in one room. They had to use common toilet
and a common tap. Men and women had to bathe in the open. This
continued even after independence.
Health and educational facilities were also deficient. There
were dispensaries but no doctors. Unqualified dispensers were
attending to the sick. Schools were only up to the fifth
standard. The vast majority lived in abject poverty and ignorance,
though the sons of some of them were better off.
Conditions
under colonialism
 In 1931, the Donoughmore constitution introduced universal
adult franchise and the Plantation Tamils were also granted the
right to vote.
In the thirties, the Sinhalese led by D.S. Senanayake,
agitated in the Legislative Council to send back Indians and to
discontinue and deport Indians in government service. In 1939
Jawaharlal Nehru (who later became the first Prime Minister of
Independent India) arrived to look into the problems faced by people
of Indian origin. Soon after, the Ceylon Indian Congress was
formed to lead the Upcountry Tamils. It later emerged as a
powerful political party and trade union.
Saumiyamoorthy
Thondaiman emerges as leader off Upcountry Tamils
 Born in Tamil Nadu in 1913, Saumiyamoorthy Thondaiman, came
to Ceylon
in 1924 at the age of 11. His father had migrated to Ceylon as a
kangany and through hard work and enterprise; he became the owner of
an estate. He became a planter and so did many members of his
extended family. In 1940 he entered politics as Chairman of the
Reception Committee of the Gampola Branch of the Ceylon Indian
Congress. He led his people through thick and thin for nearly six
decades
Developments after independence
The Ceylon Indian Congress led by Thondaiman secured 8 seats
in the first Parliament out of a total of 101. Thondaiman was
elected from the Nuwara Eliya seat. Upcountry Tamil votes
influenced 12 other electorates in favour of the left parties. Then
like a bolt from the blue, came the terrible betrayal of the Tamils
by Prime Minister D.S. Senanayake and the U.N.P. In the very year
of independence, Upcountry Tamils who numbered over a million were
rendered stateless. In a blatant act of perfidy, Senanayake passed
the Ceylon Citizenship Act, depriving citizenship to Upcountry
Tamils-almost over half the Tamil population, who had lived in
Ceylon for
many generations. It was followed in the next year by the Ceylon
Elections Amendment Act depriving voting rights to Estate Tamils,
who constituted nearly 13% of the population. As a result, in the
next elections in 1952, not a single Tamil member was elected from
the Upcountry, where half the Tamils in
Ceylon
lived.
Tamil
fraternity fails to unite
 Even in such perilous times, the Tamils failed to unite. To
their dismay, G.G. Ponnambalam who posed as the champion of the
Tamils and minorities, voted in support of these discriminatory acts
against fellow Tamils to enable him to continue in the cabinet. The
Plantation Tamils, who were already living in pathetic conditions,
were left without a political voice.
Tamil honour was partly salvaged by S.J.V. Chelvanayagam, who
voted against those despicable Acts of discrimination and broke away
from the Tamil Congress Party of G.G. Ponnambalam. In 1949 S.J.V.
Chelvanayagam formed the Federal Party to agitate for a federal
constitution to safeguard Tamil rights. He was the first Tamil
leader to alert the Tamils to the dangers of unitarianism and
Sinhalese hegemony.
 The Upcountry Tamil leader Thondaiman and his party, the
Ceylon Workers Congress carried on a hopeless and ineffective
Satyagraha against unjust laws. Unfortunately, during those trying
times, the Tamils failed to unite.
Having seen the conditions in which these poor Tamils lived
in Ceylon’s
Hill country and how the Tamils lived in apartheid-ridden South
Africa, I can safely say that the Tamils in
Ceylon
estates were treated more shabbily. The Tamils in South Africa were
also denied political rights, but they were economically much better
off than the Estate Tamils of Ceylon‘s Hill country.
On the social front, the Sinhalese disparagingly refer to
Upcountry Tamils as ‘kallathonis’ -illicit boat people and
the Northeast Tamils as ‘para damalos’ -pariahs. How deep
rooted is this prejudice can be gauged from the fact that just a few
months back during the course of a high-level meeting, the brother
of the present President of Sri Lanka, Mr. Basil Rajapakse, publicly
lashed out at a delegation of Plantation Tamils, saying, “Para
Demalo get out” –Pariah Tamils get out.
Renaming of
Ceylon Workers
Congress
In 1950, the name of Ceylon Indian Congress was changed to
Ceylon Workers Congress and it became a powerful force as it
controlled a large and strong trade union. This was done as the
nomenclature ‘Indian’ was misleading and mischievous.
Eviction of estate
Tamils
under the Sirimavo-Shastri Pact
 Without any consultations, Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur
Shastri colluded with the Sinhalese leadership by agreeing to the
repatriation of 600,000 of the one million Upcountry Tamils to
India under
the Sirimavo-Shastri Pact of October 1964. The Northeast and
Upcountry Tamils had by then been alerted to the danger of Sinhalese
racism and were against mass deportation. Under the agreement,
375,000 Upcountry Tamils were to be given Ceylon citizenship, which
was done at a snail’s pace.
The Srimavo government was brazenly racist and evicted the
estate Tamils under one pretext or the other. They nationalised the
estates and uprooted the Tamils. During repeated anti-Tamil riots,
they were chased out of their homes. Consequently, some of them
sought refuge in the Northeast. The Tamil refugees from the estates
were trying to make a living in the remote areas of Northeast, but
many were again mercilessly attacked and uprooted by the Sinhalese
army. The Sinhalese population was resettled in occupied lands.
Common suffering of
Northeast and Upcountry Tamils
The Tamils of both Northeast and the Upcountry were bound by
the common suffering at the hands of the Sinhala state and
pre-meditated mob terror. They were made refugees in their own
homeland. This common suffering united the Tamils.
Triumvirate of TULF
leaders
The Federal Party, the Ceylon Tamil Congress and the Ceylon
Workers Congress were united into the Tamil United Liberation Front
in 1976 and Thondaiman along with G. G. Ponnambalam and
Chelvanayagam were elected as leaders. In the same year, at a TULF
convention in Vaddukkoddai, presided over by Thanthai Chelva, a
historic resolution calling for the formation of a separate state of
Tamil Eelam covering the Northern and Eastern provinces was passed.
However, when TULF decided to agitate for separation, Thondaiman
chose a different path that he thought would help his own estate
community.
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While South Asia is seized with upheaval of ethnic Indians in
Malaysia, the plight of Upcountry Tamils in Sri Lanka also
warrants urgent attention. |
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Thondaiman’s
Re-entry into Parliament
In 1960 and 1965 Thondaiman was appointed Member of
Parliament to represent the stateless Tamils as they had been
earlier disenfranchised. Constitutionally, it was possible to
appoint members from unrepresented peoples. When the number of
Tamils registered as citizens increased, their influence in
elections was felt. In 1971, after 30 years, he again won an
election through Tamil votes in Nuwara Eliya. In 1978 he was
appointed as cabinet minister of Rural Industries. From then on, he
invariably held a ministerial post till his death. He used his
ministerial position to uplift the economic position of the estate
people and to regain lost rights. In 1994 the CWC secured nine seats
in Parliament and became a force to reckon with.
Anti Tamil
hostility
In the ethnic violence of 1977 and 1980, plantation Tamils
were again the worst affected. As a result of recurring ethnic
violence many plantation Tamils had taken refuge in the Northeast
and settled down there as farm hands. During the 1983 massacre of
the Tamils many fled to
India
and the Tamil homeland of Northeast Sri Lanka. The Sinhalese
politicians used the armed forces to uproot them. The Gandhiyam
Movement which was looking after their welfare was crushed and
organizers like Dr. Rajasundaram and Architect David were arrested.
Thondaiman
extracts concessions
 Thondaiman used his political and ministerial position to win
back some of the rights of his oppressed people. They were
successful in extracting their civic rights. Wages were also
increased due to trade union action. Thondaiman succeeded because
he was a master strategist and used his cabinet position to obtain
concessions. He used the strength of the CWC trade unions to
pressurize the government and estate employers. He used the Tamil
vote bank in local, parliamentary and presidential elections. He
used the voting power of the CWC in Parliament to influence the
formation of governments. He came to be regarded as king maker,
much to the chagrin of die-hard Sinhalese leaders.
In 1988 the UNP government of Premadasa passed an Act to
grant citizenship to Upcountry Tamils, who had been rendered
stateless, after their mass deportation under the infamous
Srimavo-Shastri Pact.
Northeast rebellion
helps Upcountry Tamils
 Significantly, the Sinhalese government’s fear of the armed
resistance in Northeast helped Thondaiman. As the estate Tamils
were isolated in the central highlands, the Sinhalese would have
continued to suppress them. Thondaiman used his influence to prevent
the Upcountry Tamil youth from joining the armed rebellion. Such a
revolt would have had far-reaching consequences. Nevertheless, the
estate youth settled in the Northeast could not be prevented from
throwing in their lot with the Eelam Tamils. Many fought and died.
However there is no denying the truth that all strategies of
Thondaiman and strength of Upcountry Tamils, would have not yielded
any result but for the armed threat of Northeast Tamils.
Death and
succession
Thondaiman died at the age of 86 in 1999, while he was still
a cabinet minister. He was given a well-attended state funeral,
perhaps the only Tamil to be given such a honour. Over a hundred
thousand people attended his funeral. Saumiyamoorthy Thondaiman
was a dynamic leader of the Upcountry Tamils and was invariably
labelled an “uncrowned king.” Even before his death, Arumugam
Thondaiman –his garandson was recognized as his successor. Young
Arumugam became the President of the Ceylon Workers Congress and
continues to lead the Upcountry Tamils.
Remnants of
Upcountry Tamils granted citizenship
Forced
sterilization, expatriation to India, detentions and killings, mob
violence and economic disparity effectively dissipated the Upcountry
Tamils. In 2003, the Parliament unanimously decided to grant
citizenship to the remnants of the Tamils left in the Upcountry
numbering 168,141.
It is estimated that that there are about 1.2 million
Plantation Tamils mainly in the Central Highlands, but also spread
out in the Western and Northeast Provinces. In 1948, they were 12 %
of the total population, but now they are estimated to be at only
about 5.5 % to 6 %.
Sri Lanka
is not a safe place to live as residents have to live with a daily
dose of extrajudicial killings, abductions, ransoms and rapes.
While the Notheast Tamils are fighting for a separate homeland, the
Plantation Tamils are struggling only for economic survival.
 S. Makenthiran
is a graduate of the University of Ceylon, Colombo and a Fellow of
the Chartered Association of Certified Accountants of UK. He has
served in Sri Lanka and different countries in Africa including
Zambia, Malawi and Botswana. He was a World Bank Project Finance
Officer, before immigrating to Canada. In Canada he works as an
accountancy, financial and tax consultant. He may be contacted at
makenthiran@yahoo.com
20 February 2008
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