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The Ceylon Citizenship Act No. 18 of 1948 was a controversial law passed by the Ceylon Parliament which did not grant citizenship to Indian Tamils, who were 11% of the population.
The Ceylon Citizenship Act No. 18 of 1948 was a controversial law passed by the Ceylon Parliament which did not grant citizenship to Indian Tamils, who were 11% of the population.
During the 19th and early 20th centuries the British rulers of Ceylon recruited large numbers of South Indians, primarily Indian Tamils, to work in tea, coffee, rubber and coconut plantations in Ceylon. By 1946 their numbers had grown to 780,000, 11.7% of the population. Their presence was resented by Sinhalese nationalists. There was real fear amongst the Indian Tamils that once Ceylon obtained independence, the Sinhalese, who constituted 69.4% of the population, would take steps to remove them from the country.
Shortly after independence on 4 February 1948 the new Sinhalese dominated government of Ceylon introduced the Ceylon Citizenship Bill before Parliament. The outward purpose of the Bill was to provide means of obtaining citizenship, but its real purpose was to discriminate against the Indian Tamils by denying them citizenship. [1] The Bill stipulated that anyone wishing to obtain citizenship had to prove that their father was born in Ceylon i.e. that they were at least third generation immigrants. This was an impossible task for most Indian Tamils. Few were at least third generation immigrants because they tended to return to India to give birth. [1] Those who were at least third-generation immigrants rarely had the necessary documents because they rarely registered births. [1] Therefore, they could not prove the requirements for citizenship.
The Bill was opposed fiercely in Parliament by the Ceylon Indian Congress, which represented the Indian Tamils, and the Sinhalese leftist parties. The bill was also opposed by the All Ceylon Tamil Congress, which represented the Sri Lankan Tamils, including its leader G.G. Ponnambalam. [2]
The Bill was passed by Parliament on 20 August 1948 and became law on 15 November 1948, just 285 days after Ceylon had gained independence from Britain. Only about 5,000 Indian Tamils qualified for citizenship. More than 700,000 people, about 11% of the population, were denied citizenship and made stateless. [3]
In 1949 the Ceylon Parliament passed a different subsequent act called Indian and Pakistani Residents (Citizenship) Act No.3 of 1949 whose outward purpose, again, was to provide means of obtaining citizenship for the Indian Tamils. But in reality the conditions imposed by the Act were such that they discriminated against the Indian Tamils. [1] The Act granted citizenship to anyone who had 10 years of uninterrupted residence in Ceylon (7 years for married persons) and whose income was above the stipulated level. Again, this was an impossible task for most Indian Tamils. They had a habit of periodically returning to India, thereby interrupting their residence in Ceylon, and most could not meet the income qualification. [1] Only about 100,000 Indian Tamils qualified for citizenship under this Act.[ citation needed ]
Later in 1949 the Ceylon Parliament passed the Ceylon (Parliamentary Elections) Amendment Act No.48 of 1949 which stripped the Indian Tamils of their franchise. Seven of the 95 MPs elected at the 1947 general elections were Indian Tamils. [4] Upcountry Indian Tamils influenced the result in 20 other constituencies, very often voting for the opposition Sinhalese leftist parties. None of the 95 MPs elected at the 1952 general elections were Upcountry Indian Tamils.
On 18 January 1954 Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Ceylon Prime Minister John Kotelawala signed the Nehru-Kotelawala Pact under which India agreed to the repatriation of any Indian Tamil who wanted Indian citizenship. But India refused to automatically provide Indian citizenship to those who did not qualify for Ceylon citizenship. [1] [5]
On 30 October 1964 Indian Prime Minister Lal Shastri and Ceylon Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike signed the Sirima-Shastri Pact (also known as the Indo-Ceylon Agreement) under which India agreed to the repatriation of 525,000 Indian Tamils. Another 300,000 would be offered Ceylon citizenship. The fate of the remaining 150,000 Indian Tamils would be decided later. [1] [6]
On 28 June 1974 Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Ceylon Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike signed the Sirimavo-Gandhi Pact under which India and Sri Lanka agreed to grant citizenship to the 150,000 Indian Tamils whose status was left unresolved by the Sirima-Shastri Pact. [1] [7]
In 1982 India abrogated the Sirima-Shastri Pact and Sirimavo-Gandhi Pact. At this point 90,000 Indian Tamils who had been granted Indian citizenship were still in Sri Lanka and another 86,000 were in the process of applying for Indian citizenship. [1] [8]
In 1988 the Sri Lankan Parliament passed the Grant of Citizenship to Stateless Persons Act which granted Sri Lankan citizenship to all Indian Tamils who hadn't applied for Indian citizenship under previous agreements. [1] [9]
On 7 October 2003 the Sri Lankan Parliament unanimously passed the Grant of Citizenship to Persons of Indian Origin Act No.35 of 2003 which granted Sri Lankan citizenship to all Indian Tamils who had been residing in Sri Lanka since October 1964 and their descendants. This amounted to 168,141 persons and included those who had been granted Indian citizenship under previous agreements but were still living in Sri Lanka, though they had to rescind their Indian citizenship. [1] [10] All Indian Tamils living in Sri Lanka had finally been granted Sri Lankan citizenship, 55 years after independence. [11]
The history of Sri Lanka is intertwined with the history of the broader Indian subcontinent and the surrounding regions, comprising the areas of South Asia, Southeast Asia and Indian Ocean.
Sirima Ratwatte Dias Bandaranaike, commonly known as Sirimavo Bandaranaike (මැතිනිය), was a Sri Lankan politician. She was the world's first female prime minister when she became Prime Minister of Sri Lanka in 1960. She chaired the Sri Lanka Freedom Party from 1960 to 1994 and served three terms as prime minister, two times as the chief executive, 1960 to 1965 and 1970 to 1977, and once again in a presidential system from 1994 to 2000, governing under the presidency of her daughter Chandrika Kumaratunga.
Events in the year 1964 in the Republic of India.
Don Stephen Senanayake was a Ceylonese statesman. He was the first Prime Minister of Ceylon having emerged as the leader of the Sri Lankan independence movement that led to the establishment of self-rule in Ceylon. He is considered as the "Father of the Nation".
Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike, often referred to by his initials as S. W. R. D. or S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike and known by the Sri Lankan people as "The Silver Bell of Asia", was the fourth Prime Minister of the Dominion of Ceylon, serving from 1956 until his assassination in 1959. The founder of the left-wing and Sinhalese nationalist Sri Lanka Freedom Party, his tenure saw the country's first left-wing reforms.
The Ceylon Workers' Congress (CWC) is a political party in Sri Lanka that has traditionally represented Sri Lankan Tamils of Indian origin working in the plantation sector of the economy.
Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka are Tamil people of Indian origin in Sri Lanka. They are also known as Malayaga Tamilar, Hill Country Tamils, Up-Country Tamils or simply Indian Tamils. They are partly descended from workers sent from South India to Sri Lanka in the 19th and 20th centuries to work in coffee, tea and rubber plantations. Some also migrated on their own as merchants and as other service providers. These Tamil speakers mostly live in the central highlands, also known as the Malayakam or Hill Country yet others are also found in major urban areas and in the Northern Province. Although they are all termed as Tamils today, some have Telugu and Malayalee origins as well as diverse South Indian caste origins. They are instrumental in the plantation sector economy of Sri Lanka. In general, socio-economically their standard of living is below that of the national average and they are described as one of the poorest and most neglected groups in Sri Lanka. In 1964 a large percentage were repatriated to India, but left a considerable number as stateless people. By the 1990s most of these had been given Sri Lankan citizenship. Most are Hindus with a minority of Christians and Muslims amongst them. There are also a small minority followers of Buddhism among them. Politically they are supportive of trade union-based political parties that have supported most of the ruling coalitions since the 1980s.
The Official Language Act , commonly referred to as the Sinhala Only Act, was an act passed in the Parliament of Ceylon in 1956. The act replaced English with Sinhala as the sole official language of Ceylon, with the exclusion of Tamil.
Samuel James Veluppillai Chelvanayakam was a Malaysian-born Ceylonese Tamil lawyer, politician and Member of Parliament. He was the founder and leader of the Illankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK) and Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) and a political leader of the Ceylon Tamil community for more than two decades. Chelvanayakam has been described as a father figure to Ceylon's Tamils, to whom he was known as "Thanthai Chelva".
The origins of the Sri Lankan Civil War lie in the continuous political rancor between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Sri Lankan Tamils. According to Jonathan Spencer, a social anthropologist from the School of Social and Political Studies of the University of Edinburgh, the war is an outcome of how modern ethnic identities have been made and re-made since the colonial period, with the political struggle between minority Tamils and the Sinhalese-dominant government accompanied by rhetorical wars over archeological sites and place name etymologies, and the political use of the national past.
Tamil Eelam is a proposed independent state that many Tamils in Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora aspire to create in the north and east of Sri Lanka. The name is derived from the ancient Tamil name for Sri Lanka, Eelam. Tamil Eelam, although encompassing the traditional homelands of Sri Lankan Tamils, does not have official status or recognition by world states. Large sections of the North-East were under de facto control of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for most of the 1990s–2000s during the Sri Lankan Civil War.
Between 1948 and 1972, Ceylon was an independent country in the Commonwealth of Nations, that shared a monarch with other dominions of the Commonwealth. In 1948, the British Colony of Ceylon was granted independence as Ceylon. In 1972, the country became a republic within the Commonwealth, and its name was changed to Sri Lanka.
Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism is the conviction of the Sri Lankan Tamil people, a minority ethnic group in the South Asian island country of Sri Lanka, that they have the right to constitute an independent or autonomous political community. This idea has not always existed. Sri Lankan Tamil national awareness began during the era of British rule during the nineteenth century, as Tamil Hindu revivalists tried to counter Protestant missionary activity. The revivalists, led by Arumuga Navalar, used literacy as a tool to spread Hinduism and its principles.
The Bandaranaike–Chelvanayakam Pact was an agreement signed between the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike and the leader of the main Tamil political party in Sri Lanka S. J. V. Chelvanayakam on July 26, 1957. It advocated the creation of a series of regional councils in Sri Lanka as a means to giving a certain level of autonomy to the Tamil people of the country, and was intended to solve the communal disagreements that were occurring in the country at the time.
Sri Lankan Tamils in India mainly refer to Tamil people of Sri Lankan origin in India and non-resident Sri Lankan Tamil. They are partly who migrated to India and their descendants and mostly refugees from Sri Lanka because of the concluded Sri Lankan Civil War. In general socio economically they are living below poverty line, except few people who settled in India during early times, rich businessmen, and professionals. In Tamil Nadu they are also known as Ceylon Tamils or Jaffna Tamils.
Chellappah Suntharalingam was a Ceylon Tamil academic, politician, Member of Parliament and government minister.
The Sirima–Shastri Pact or Srimavo-Shastri Pact was an agreement that was signed between Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, and Lal Bahadur Shastri, the Prime Minister of India, on 30 October 1964. Officially, it was known as Agreement on Persons of Indian Origin in Ceylon. It was a significant agreement in determining the status and future of people of Indian origin in Ceylon.
The Sirima–Gandhi Pact or Srimavo-Gandhi Pact was an agreement that was signed between Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, and Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India, on 28 June 1974. It was a follow-up agreement of Sirima-Shastri Pact that left 150,000 people of Indian origin in Sri Lanka to future account. Sirima-Shastri Pact agreed to grant Ceylonese citizenship to 300,000 Indian population in Sri Lanka and 525,000 people repatriation to India.
The Nehru-Kotelawala Pact was an agreement that was signed between Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of India, and John Kotelawala, the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, on 18 January 1954. It was an agreement in regarding to the status and future of people of Indian origin in Ceylon. They were brought by British from Madras Presidency in British India to work in tea, coffee and coconut plantations of British Ceylon.
Karuppiah Kumaravelu was a Ceylonese politician.
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