‘UK has moral obligations toward marginalized Tamil plantation people’
“We demand Princess Anne to accept historical responsibility towards the most marginalized group of people in SriLankan, the Tamil plantation residents who register lower measures on education, health, land, housing rights, employment indices, and almost all human development indices compared to every other community in SriLanka,” said Mano Ganesan, leader of Tamil Progressive Alliance (TPA) as HRH Princess Royal visits SriLanka.
Ganesan, issuing a statement from Chennai, where he is attending the Non-Resident Tamils confab hosted by the Government of Tamil Nadu, also said:
“Princes Anne is here in Sri Lanka to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of diplomatic relations between Sri Lanka and the UK.
“I find no better time to raise this issue.
“Marginalization of our community is the dark segment of this 75-year history.
We don’t want to submit a list of blame. But, I submit a reminder of the dark history to Princess Anne.
The Malaiyaha Tamil community, as they are ethnically called, were brought to Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, from India in 1823 by companies under the British crown.
They were controversially deprived of citizenship immediately after independence in 1948, though plantation workers provided the second-highest foreign reserve in Asia to the treasury of Ceylon.
This ungrateful activity happened over-riding the protection for minorities found in article 29(2) of the then British constitution.
Thereafter, many were subjected to involuntary repatriation to India from 1964; all these occurred while Ceylon was very much under dominion status headed by the British Crown.
Our worker community is tied to and dependent on their plantation employers and are not full-fledged citizens of Sri Lanka even today after the British left us high and dry in the hands of the local brown Raj that replaced the British white Raj.
Her Majesty’s government failed to do what French rulers did to the people of Pondicherry in India.
As the leader of the largest elected political entity of the Malaiyaha Tamil community, the TPA, I request the British to support our people, the most underprivileged and marginalized SriLankans with affirmative action to catch up with lost ground towards becoming full-fledged citizens of SriLanka.