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Repatriated Tamils from Lanka face a bleak future
The dream of M Sivanadiyan, a Sri Lankan Tamilian, came crashing when he was asked to leave Sri Lanka on the ground of his Indian origin some 35 years ago.
Chirala: The dream of M Sivanadiyan, a Sri Lankan Tamilian, came crashing when he was asked to leave Sri Lanka on the ground of his Indian origin some 35 years ago. He was just 20 when he received the orders for repatriation along with scores of Sri Lankan Tamils of Indian origin from the Sri Lankan government.
An SSLC pass, he was relocated in a spinning mill at Jardhanpeta in Chirala of Prakasam district after repatriation along with 200 families. It is still a grim battle for him to rebuild his life and the story of the other fellow-Tamil families is no different. It is an odd and risky journey from the work in tea and coffee plantations in Sri Lanka to weaving in spinning mills for all of them.
The repatriated families were given training to spin cotton and got employed in a local spinning mill. Life looked gloomy for all of them with the closure of the mill after sometime. With this, the story of their resettlement is back to square one. The Sirima-Gandhi pact entrusted the job of resettlement of the Tamil families to the Indian government.
Accordingly, the resettlement included a job per family, house and healthcare. A group of 200 families were assigned work at Andhra Cooperative Spinning Mills Ltd at Guntakal, 250 families at Nellore Cooperative Spinning Mills Ltd at Nellore, 50 families at Rajahmundry Cooperative Spinning Mills Ltd at Rajahmundry and the remaining 200 families at Chirala Cooperative Spinning Mills Ltd at Jandrapeta near Chirala with a colony exclusively built for them at Janardhanapuram. Thus the name of so-called Ceylon Colony came into existence.
To their chagrin, the promises were not kept with the closure of the spinning mill. More than 50 per cent of them migrated to other places like Madurai, Ooty, Srivilliputhur to work in spinning mills. The left-over families took to weaving on handlooms in Chirala cluster. Sivanadiyan, president of the Repatriates Association said, “We submitted a number of requests to the district administration for relocation of Tamil families who became displaced with the closure of the spinning mill.
We want lands for cultivation and it is the responsibility of the district administration to keep the government’s promise”. Similar tales of deprivation abound involving K Kannuswamy, P Palanimuthu, AF Philip Ashirvadam, S Selvaraj, T Rajendran, S Ilangeer so on and so forth. The plight of the repatriated Tamil families began with the Ceylon Citizenship Bill which rendered them homeless and non-natives of Sri Lanka.
By Naresh Nandam
