The case of "up-country Tamils" of Sri Lanka, highlighted in a recent article in The Hindu by V. Suryanarayan of the University of Madras, suggests some interesting possible parallels with the case of the Lhotshampa Nepali-speaking refugees of Bhutan. Essentially, it is a story of how governments find—or may find—it convenient to sweep a problem away due to larger geopolitical considerations.
Up-country Tamils are quite different from "Sri Lankan Tamils" of the North and East of the country in that they are descendants of Tamil labourers brought to colonial Ceylon to work on coffee, tea, rubber and coconut plantations. At the time of Independence, these up-country Tamils actually numbered more than Sri Lankan Tamils, who make up about 12 percent of the population.
The Ceylon Citizenship Act of 1948 and the Indian and Pakistani Residents Act of 1949 together served to disenfranchise the up-country Tamils and render them stateless. The question of these stateless Tamils remained a major issue in Indo-Lankan affairs, with Colombo making the implicit assumption that those who failed to qualify for citizenship "were unquestionably Indian nationals and that New Delhi should regard them as such", while New Delhi´s policy was to discourage overseas Indians from from applying for Indian citizenship. "Jawaharlal Nehru emphatically maintained that except for those who voluntarily opted for Indian citizenship, the Indian settlers and their descendants were the responsibility of Ceylon," writes Mr Suryanarayan.
Nehru´s principled position was reversed by his successor Lai Bahadur Shastri, who reasoned that India could easily absorb a million Tamils from Sri Lanka. It is a tragedy of India-Sri Lanka relations, says Mr Suryanarayan, that this Indo-Lankan agreement was finalised without taking into consideration the feelings and views of the up-country Tamils themselves. As prominent Sri Lankan trade unionist and politician Mr Thondaman put it, the people of Indian origin were reduced to the status of "merchandise", to be divided equally between the two countries in the name of good neighbourly relations.