MAY 26, 2007, will go down as a 'red letter day' in the otherwise divisive and fractious parliamentary history of Sri Lanka. The Treasury and Opposition benches in one voice agreed to enact whatever legislative measures were needed to confer citizenship rights on 28,500 'Sri Lanka Tamils of recent Indian origin' currently languishing in refugee camps across Tamil Nadu. What makes the collective resolve of the Lankan Parliament even more special is that the initiative for it emanated from the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), a party labelled as 'ultra-nationalist' and known for its antipathy towards 'outsiders' and 'external influences' in the affairs of the island nation.
The subject of citizenship rights of Indian-origin Tamils, who had been brought to the island by the British to work in tea plantations and other sectors in the upcountry, was a contentious issue even before the island nation was liberated from colonial rule in 1948. Tamils of Indian origin in Sri Lanka have undergone untold hardships since the unfortunate decision of the then Ceylon government to enact a law for their disenfranchisement. In a way, the matter involving the fate of close to a million people was the first major cause of social discord and political turmoil in the country.
Mercifully, beginning with the Kotelawala-Nehru pact of 1954 there have been sustained efforts to undo the injustice to Indian-origin Tamils. Slowly but steadily, they were absorbed into the mainstream in recognition of their enormous contribution to the nation's economy and society. The issue was addressed to the satisfaction of all. Successive regimes in Colombo, particularly the Bhandaranayake family and J.R. Jayawardene, deserve credit for their efforts, which culminated in the 1987 Indo-Lanka Accord. Some residual problems, however, remained, and the plight of the Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in Tamil Nadu is one of them.
They could not obtain Sri Lankan citizenship, granted generously by the state of Sri Lanka to most Indian-origin Tamils after initial stages of reluctance, because of loopholes in the Act as amended in 2003 by the Foreign Minister, the late Lakshman Kadirgamar. Under the Act, continuous stay in Sri Lanka from 1964 is mandatory for eligibility for citizenship. In the case of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees, the chain broke in the 1990s because of a situation that was not of their own making. An overwhelming majority of them had to flee the island in the early 1990s because of the disturbed security environment as a consequence of the conflict. Hence the need for a humane approach to the Sri Lanka refugees in Tamil Nadu.
Ramalingam Chandrasekeran and his fellow parliamentarian Bimal Ratnayake of the JVP deserve special praise. They not only made an effort to reach out to the hapless refugees during their visit to Tamil Nadu in the second week of May but also lost no time in getting a firm commitment from the government to redress the long-standing grievance of the refugees eager to return to Sri Lanka. Obviously, their adjournment motion in Parliament seeking equal status for the Sri Lankan refugees in Tamil Nadu has the approval of the JVP top brass, if not of the entire rank and file
Edited By - Cham7 - 5 Jun 2007 21:50:01 GMT |
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