Book Review: The Other Tamils of Sri Lanka; By Prof. V. Suryanarayan

CAS article no. 0047/2016

Courtesy: The Book Review, VOLUME XL NUMBER 3 March 2016

Kumari Jayawardena and Rachel Kurian, Class, Patriarchy and Ethnicity on Sri Lankan Plantations: Two Centuries of Power and Protest (Orient Black Swan, Hyderabad, 2015), Price not mentioned.

The book traces two centuries old history of plantations in Sri Lanka from its inception in the early 19th century to the present. In so doing the book highlights the complex inter-relationship between power and class, gender and ethnic hierarchies. The authors are well known social scientists and have already made a mark as perceptive writers on Sri Lankan history and politics. Based on their rich experience, coupled with extensive use of archival and secondary sources and enriched by personal interviews with key players the book is an invaluable contribution to Sri Lankan history and politics. The book is history writing at its best.

The book is divided into seven parts. The first deals with the legacy of slavery. Even though slavery was abolished in the British colonies, a “new form of slavery”, to use Hugh Tinker’s picturesque phrase, came into existence. The second part deals with the role of the outsiders – bureaucrats, political leaders, trade union activists and civil society organizations, who tried to bring about improvement in the living conditions of the workers. The third section deals with labour resistance - the heroic struggle of the workers for a better life. The fourth part is devoted to the struggle for getting citizenship and democratic rights. The fifth part analyses the impact of the ethnic conflict in the plantation areas. Though the hill country Tamils did not subscribe to the goal of a separate state of Tamil Eelam and their representative organization - Ceylon Workers Congress - was a partner in the Sinhalese-dominated Governments, these innocent people were subjected to vicious and savage attacks by the lumpen sections of the Sinhalese in 1977, 1981 and 1983. The sixth part deals with patriarchy, which influenced all aspects of plantation life. The seventh section highlights the achievements of the plantation community in terms of social justice and human development.

The agony and suffering undergone by the Indian coolies under the British Raj and the Planters Raj are innumerable. The verdant carpet of green in the central parts of the island, which has made Sri Lanka the veritable “island paradise”, was due to the sweat and agony of the Indian Tamil plantation workers. I would like to give two contrasting vignettes of the affluent planters and the impoverished workers. While teaching in the Peradeniya University in Sri Lanka few years ago, I came across the memoirs of Philip Crowe, US Ambassador in Ceylon in the 1950’s, entitled Diversions of a Diplomat in Ceylon. To quote Philip Crowe: “The estate bungalows are roomy, surrounded by lovely gardens. Servants are plentiful and relatively cheap. Social life is mainly limited to the local club consisting of a tennis court and a bar. There, at weekends, the planters gather for bridge, drink, billiards and tennis. Somerset Maugham might not find the makings of a great novel immediately, but the pleasures of life in the small tea communities in Ceylon are apparent”. CV Velu Pillai, sensitive Indian Tamil writer, has described workers’ lives as follows: “Here is a row of tin roofed lines, the very warehouse where serfdom thrives, with a scant space of ten by twelve, there is the hearth, home, drenched in soot and smoke, to eat and sleep, to incubate and breed, to meet the master’s need”.

The British planters knew about the availability of cheap labour in South India. When Sinhalese workers did not take up the hard work of clearing the jungles and start the plantations, the planters turned to South India for labour. Geographical proximity further encouraged the British. The authors have quoted the excellent study of Kathleen Gough on Thanjavur district where the poor workers were in a “state of chronic indebtedness” to land owners and money lenders. They naturally fell prey to the allurement of Kanganies, who advanced them money to meet the expenses relating to travel and starting life anew. The workers faced innumerable problems on their long march to the estates. They suffered from fever and dysentery and when they fell ill they were driven off or allowed to die. Their indebtedness to Kanganies trapped them in a vicious system of slavery. The government assisted the planters in several ways. They were given subsidies and incentives, including tax benefits; land was made available at cheap rates, and, what is more, roads and railways were constructed which linked the plantations to the Colombo port.

Something like a pyramid of power came into existence in the plantations. At the top of the pyramid was the planter or superintendant, known in Tamil as Periya Dorai (big master), who wielded absolute power and could do anything that he wanted in the plantations. Under him was the Sinna Dorai (little master). Below them were the office staffs which included a Kanakkapillai (accountant), invariably an English-educated Jaffna Tamil, who kept socially aloof from the workers, but bossed over them. At the lowest rung were the workers, who occupied the overcrowded “lines”. There was gender division, with women working from morning till evening. With their “nimble fingers’ they plucked tea and carried it to the factories. Men were given work relating to pruning of tea bushes. They worked for shorter hours, but they were paid higher wages up to 1984. The planters did not allow the workers to interact with those outside the plantations. Education was not encouraged and when schools were started they performed the custodial function and not the instructional function. The Authors have pointed out that in 1920 there were only 275 schools with 11,000 pupils, whereas there were 68,000 children of school going age. The exploitative system of production continued for many years. As Natesa Iyer, one of the pioneers in mobilising the workers has written: “The unskilled ignorant labourers who have been brought to these estates have had no idea of any concerted action for their betterment, but the planting community by its organization and financial strength has come to such an influential position that nothing was impossible for them”. Despite their miserable conditions, flow of Indian labour continued unabated till 1939. It must be pointed out that on the eve of independence in 1948, the Indian Tamils were more in number than the indigenous Sri Lankan Tamils.

The Indian National Congress, especially Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, took keen interest in the problems and welfare of the Indian workers in Ceylon. The self-respect movement started by EV Ramasamy Naicker also exerted some influence among the Tamils in Ceylon. Gandhiji’s visit to Ceylon in 1927 to popularize Khadi and prohibition and Jawaharlal Nehru’s visit in 1931, along with his wife Kamala and daughter Indira, gave a fillip to political consciousness. In fact, understanding Indian involvement is essential to have a proper evaluation of the Indian Tamil community. Though the authors have described the Indian involvement in Sri Lanka, from an Indian point of view, a more detailed analysis is called for. In this review article I have tried to fill up the gap.

In a message to the Indian National Congress in 1939, Jawaharlal Nehru said: “India is weak today and cannot do much for her children abroad. But she does not forget them and every insult to them is humiliation and sorrow for her. A day will come when her long arm will protect them and her strength will compel justice to them”. These words of cheer and hope were a natural culmination of the Indian national movement, under the inspiring leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, who started his political career championing the rights of the indentured labourers in South Africa. The cause of the Indians Overseas was also dear to other great leaders like Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Srinivasa Shastry, HN Kunzru, CF Andrews, Acharya Kripalani and Ram Manohar Lohia, who repeatedly stressed the necessity to safeguard the interests of these unfortunate people, who had to leave the shores of Mother India to cater to the economic interests of imperialist Britain.

Jawaharlal Nehru’s second visit to Ceylon in July 1939, as the authors point out, was to study the problems faced by the Indian urban workers who were adversely affected by the Government’s policy of retrenching “non-Ceylonese” from work. A non-Ceylonese was defined as one who was not born in Ceylon. The Indian workers were employed in the railways, Colombo port and public works department. 2, 500 workers were compulsorily retired. The Indian community interpreted the government’s move as the first attempt to get rid of the Indian workers completely. They approached the Indian National Congress and the Congress party deputed Jawaharlal Nehru to study the situation. Nehru met a cross section of Sri Lankan leaders, addressed public meetings and exhorted the Indian community to sink their differences and unite under one banner. Nehru’s appeal had the desired effect and the Ceylon Indian Congress was formed to champion the cause of the Indian community. Nehru’s objective was to use his good offices so that the Government will revise its stance and permit the workers to become citizens of the country. An important consequence of the visit was the decision taken by the Government of Madras to completely ban the recruitment of unskilled labour from August 1939.

From the point of view of India-Ceylon relations Nehru’s visit was a turning point. It was an eye-opener for Jawaharlal Nehru. He found not only the Board of Ministers and government officials but also Sinhalese political leaders to be adamant and unresponsive to Indian aspirations. Despite his frustration and disenchantment, Nehru took a long term view and highlighted the necessity to put bilateral relations on a secure footing. In a public speech in Colombo on 18 July 1939, Nehru declared: “I do not know what the future will bring; but my advice to the people of India is that if the people of Ceylon really do wrong, let us reason with them”. He underlined geographical realities and pointed out: “Ceylon cannot forget that India and Ceylon are close and that India, by her size, is like a giant. It is easy enough to create psychological barriers and ill will, but not so easy to remove or control them. I cannot conceive of any hostile action on the part of India towards a country like Ceylon, if it does not threaten her freedom”.

Part IV of the book is devoted to citizenship, statelessness and repatriation. Six months after independence, the Sri Lankan government enacted citizenship and franchise laws, which had adverse fallout on the Indian Tamil community. The immediate provocation for these enactments was the result of the 1947 parliamentary election, where the Indian Tamils overwhelmingly voted for left parties. The results, as the authors point out, were matters of great concern for the Sinhala and Tamil bourgeoisie. The Sinhalese extremists carried on a vicious propaganda that the plantation workers would not only “swamp” the electorates, but also constitute a “fifth column” in an Indian takeover of the country.

Citizenship was granted not on the basis of birth, but through descent and registration. While the act automatically granted citizenship to Sinhalese, Sri Lankan Tamils, Muslims and Burghers, as far as Indian Tamils were concerned, they had to produce evidence of their birth and commitment to stay permanently in the island. As Prof. Shelton Kodikara has pointed out the legislation “was not intended to provide citizenship to the vast majority of Indians in Ceylon”. Even Prime Minister DS Senanayake admitted that he would have found it difficult to produce the birth certificate of his father, whereas the Indian workers were expected to produce birth certificates to prove their permanent residence in the country. The end result was to render the overwhelming majority of Indian Tamils as stateless people.

It is the tragedy of Tamil politics that despite the affinities of language and religion, the Indian Tamils and Sri Lankan Tamils could not present a united front against the Sinhalese-dominated governments on crucial issues like citizenship. Amb YD Gundevia, who has dealt with India-Ceylon relations, in his book, Outside the Archives, has mentioned that the advisor to DS Senanayake on citizenship issue was a Sri Lankan Tamil bureaucrat, Sir Kandiah Vaidyanathan. According to Gundevia, Kandiah Vaidyanathan was “more Sinhalese than DS Senanayake himself”. When the voting took place in Parliament, those who voted in favour of the government included many Tamil members – C. Sundaralingam and C Sittambalam (both were members of the Cabinet), independent members like SU Ethirimanasingham, V Nalliah and AI Thambiah, and Tamil Congress members K Kanagaratnam and T Ramalingam. However, the Tamil Congress led by GG Ponnambalam and SJV Chelvanayagam voted against the Act. Few days later, the Tamil Congress decided to join the Government and its leader GG Ponnambalam was made a minister. This led to a split in the Tamil Congress; S J V Chelvanayagam and C Vanniasingham resigned from Tamil Congress and formed the Federal Party.

The legal status of the stateless people of Indian origin vitiated India-Sri Lanka relations for many years after independence. As long as the British ruled, the Indian Tamils had the same legal status as the Sinhalese and the Sri Lankan Tamils, for all were British subjects. As Jawaharlal Nehru wrote in 1948: “One of the conditions for emigration to other countries to which the Government of India have always attached utmost importance … has been that an emigrant labourer shall be given facilities to settle in the country … on equal terms with the members of the indigenous population”. Colombo did not subscribe to this point of view. According to W T Jayasinghe, former Defence and Foreign Secretary of Sri Lanka, the Indian settlers were Indian nationals. In his book, The Indo-Ceylon Talks: The Politics of Immigrant Labour, Jayasinghe has written: “The fact of their Indian nationality was never in question”. Colombo wanted to absorb only a small fraction of the Indian population as Sri Lankan citizens. From this perspective they argued that it is necessary to prescribe rigid tests for proving the permanent abiding interest of the Indian community. Herein lies the seeds of the “absorbable minimum” put forward by successive Sri Lankan governments. Girija Shankar Bajpai summed up the apparent discrimination: “The Indian who has worked in Ceylon is to be thrown back to India as a squeezed lemon”.

While analyzing the Sirimavo-Shastri Pact of October 1964, the authors do not dwell upon the Indian perspective on the subject. As pointed out earlier, from the very beginning, it was Colombo’s assumption that those who did not qualify for Ceylon citizenship were unquestionably Indian nationals and that New Delhi should regard them as such. On the contrary, as far as New Delhi was concerned, its policy was to discourage Indians Overseas from applying for Indian citizenship. In the protracted negotiations that took place between New Delhi and successive Ceylonese Prime Ministers – DS Senanayake, Dudley Senanayake, John Kotelawala and SWRD Bandaranaike – Jawaharlal Nehru emphatically maintained that except for those who voluntarily opted for Indian citizenship, the Indian immigrants in the island were the responsibility of Sri Lanka. The era of statelessness thus continued with no solution in sight.

Following Nehru’s demise in 1964, the time tested and principled policy enumerated above was derailed and sidetracked by Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and Minister for Foreign Affairs Swaran Singh. During this period New Delhi was eager to come out of the “diplomatic isolation” in South Asia following the humiliating defeat in the Sino-Indian conflict of October-November 1962. Shastri wanted fresh efforts to be made to put India-Sri Lanka relations on a firm footing and was willing to find a solution to the problem of statelessness on the basis of “give and take”. As a first step to attain this end, officials in the Sri Lanka division of the Ministry of External Affairs, who subscribed to Nehruvian principles, were either transferred or sidelined. In his book, From Bandung to Tashkent, Amb C S Jha, former Commonwealth Secretary, has given a graphic account of how Nehruvian principles were abandoned to find a solution to the problem of statelessness.

The astute politician that Sirimavo Bandaranaike was, she made the best of New Delhi’s changed stance. Ably assisted by Shirley Amarasinghe, Sri Lankan government clinched the issue in October 1964. The Sri Lankan leaders pleaded with Shastri and CS Jha, if India could accept 10 million refugees from Pakistan, less than a million from Sri Lanka would not pose a problem. Finally the negotiations came to a close in October 1964, with India agreeing to confer citizenship on 5, 25, 000 people of Indian origin plus their natural increase and Ceylon agreeing to confer citizenship on 3,00,000 people plus their natural increase on the basis of 7:4. By a subsequent Agreement in 1974, India agreed to confer citizenship on 75,000 persons and Sri Lanka, in turn, agreed to confer citizenship on 75,000 persons. The entire process was expected to be completed by October 1981.

Few significant features of Sirimavo-Shastri Pact must be underlined. The agreement was signed without taking into consideration the views of the concerned people in the island. All trade unions and political parties, representing Indian Tamils, condemned the Pact as inhuman. In a lengthy conversation with me Thondaman said that the Government of Ceylon did not permit him to go to New Delhi to represent his views. The most damning indictment is the fact that the agreements did not solve the problem of statelessness. The struggle for ending statelessness continued. As a result of protracted parliamentary and extra-parliamentary struggles the Government of Sri Lanka enacted first a legislation to confer citizenship on stateless people. Later legislation was enacted to confer citizenship on those Indian passport holders and their natural increase who could not be repatriated to India.

In October 1981, New Delhi, in a rare act of statesmanship, decided to unilaterally terminate the pacts. Thomas Abraham, then High Commissioner in Sri Lanka, was convinced that the Pacts were inhuman. What is more, by 1981 the natural increase also included the natural increase of the natural increase. He explained this conundrum to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who felt that this cannot go on. Adding to New Delhi’s dismay were organized riots in the plantation areas in 1981, encouraged and abetted by Sinhalese politicians like Cyril Mathew to drive away as many Indian Tamils as possible to India before the Pacts ended. Thomas Abraham visited the plantations for an on the spot study of the situation and became convinced that the riots were organized. He returned to Colombo and declared that if law and order was not restored immediately “India knows what to do”. The warning had the desired effect and the Government forces swung into action.. Thomas Abraham met MG Ramachandran, Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and explained the necessity to terminate the pacts. An all party delegation from Tamil Nadu, led by MG Ramachandran, met Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and requested her not to extend the pacts. The decision to terminate the pacts was welcomed by all sections of Indian Tamil population.

How did Colombo respond to the situation? In the book authored by Jayasinghe, cited earlier, Jayasinghe has turned a Nelson’s eye to the momentous developments of 1981. In fact only one paragraph is devoted to the shocking incidents that took place. There is no mention about organized violence, no mention about Thomas Abraham’s visit to the plantations, and no analysis of New Delhi’s changed stance. Jayasinghe mentions that it was a bolt from the blue when in March 1982, the Indian High Commission transmitted a third person note from the Indian Government to the Ministry of Defence that the two agreements of 1964 and 1974 were no longer binding. Jayasinghe added that India thus delivered a coup de grace to the two agreements.

The authors have described the unique Gandhian form of resistance, called the prayer campaign, launched by Ceylon Workers Congress under Thondaman in 1986. The campaign started on Thai Pongal, harvest festival, (January 14) and was to continue till Tamil New Year (April 14). Its objective was to persuade the government to end the era of statelessness among the Indian Tamils. The plan was as follows: The workers would pray from 7 am to 12 noon and then resume work. The prayer campaign could not be termed as a strike; what is more, if the management was willing, the CWC declared, the workers were willing to put in extra work in the evening. The initial reaction of the Government was to deal with the prayer campaign with a heavy hand. The Minister for Plantation Industries said that if the workers prayed for five hours they would not get wages for five hours. Thondaman immediately responded, “then, we will pray for the whole day”. Thondaman’s astute diplomacy paid dividends and the Government was compelled to initiate steps to end statelessness. Soon after the prayer campaign, I met Thondaman and asked him how this idea came to his mind. He said he could not sleep in the night; he was disturbed and was pacing up and down. Early in the morning the idea of prayer came to his mind and he decided to go ahead with it. I told Thondaman that on similar occasions Gandhiji used to explain his intuition as the “inner voice”. Thondaman proved that Gandhiji was still relevant in Sri Lanka, though, in India, we have, by and large, forgotten Gandhian principles.

The plantation workers of Indian origin constitute the largest working group in Sri Lanka. It took nearly hundred years for trade unions to take roots and another half a century before they could acquire citizenship and democratic rights. During this period the governments in Sri Lanka and India viewed them as an embarrassing set of statistics to be divided between the two countries in the name of good neighbourly relations. The Sri Lankan Tamil leaders treated them with contempt because majority of them are dalits. I recall Vigneshwaran, Chief Minister of the Northern Province, delivering Kannabiram Memorial lecture, organized by the Peoples Union of Civil Liberties, in Chennai few months ago. Wigneswaran maintained that the Tamils living in the north and the east have all the attributes of a “nation without a State” – a long history which goes back to pre-Buddhist times, a language, probably the oldest living language in the world, which binds them all and distinct cultural attributes. For me what was striking about the lecture was the complete omission of any reference to the “other Tamils” in the hill country with whom Wigneswaran shares the common bonds of religion and language.

Apply any yardstick – poverty level, rate of literacy, educational attainments, health, status of women – the hill country Tamils occupy the lowest rung of the ladder. The deplorable status of the community should be a matter of concern for Colombo, New Delhi and Chennai. While it is undoubtedly true that conditions in the hill country has improved over the years, the fact remains that much more remains to be done before the community could rise to become equal partners in progress. The political scene presents a dismal picture. Arumugham Thondaman, leader of the Ceylon Workers Congress, does not have the political acumen of his grandfather.

What about the government and people of Tamil Nadu? Jayalalitha, Karunanidhi, Vaiko, Nedumaran – they do not refer to the manifold challenges facing the hill country Tamils in Sri Lanka. Is it because they are, to use Frantz fanon’s phrase, the Wretched of the Earth?

(Prof. V. Suryanarayan is founding Director and former Senior Professor, Centre for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Madras and President, Chennai Centre for China Studies. His e mail id: suryageeth@gmail.com)