Living on the Margins. Minorities in South Asia - EURAC

A subsequent agreement signed between the two governments in 1974 stipulated that the
two countries would share these ‘stateless’ people equally. This was an arrangement
made between the two governments, there was no consultation with the affected people
or their political leaders. It prompted S.Thondaman, the leader of the Ceylon Workers’
Congress, the leading plantation workers’ trade union, to remark that the Indian Tamils as
a “community of human beings, with soul, mind and body with personality” should not
be “apportioned between countries like beasts of burden…only to maintain good
neighbourly relations.” xvi
The mainstream Tamil nationalist movement took up the citizenship rights issue of the
‘stateless Tamils’ as a major theme in their campaign for ‘Tamil rights.’ For example, the
1985 Thimpu Principles, put forward by all the Tamil groups in their negotiations with
the Sri Lankan government, demanded the “recognition of the right to full citizenship and
other fundamental democratic rights of all Tamils, who look upon the Island as their
country.” xvii In 1986, the government of President J. R. Jayewardene conferred
citizenship to 94,000 ‘stateless’ Tamils in the plantation sector, bringing the citizenship
issue to an end. The closure of the citizenship problem coincided with the CWC joining
the ruling UNP in a coalition government. Evidently, President Jayewardene had an
electoral objective in mind.
After the citizenship issue was resolved, the question of the rights of the ‘Up Country
Tamil’ community shifted to two other main areas. Moreover, the theme of their
economic and social rights has taken a new turn after the privatisation of plantation
management in the mid-1980s. Among the politically active sections of the Up Country
Tamil community, the demand has emerged for autonomy and self-determination rights.
The context for this shift is the national debate on power-sharing and regional autonomy
for North-eastern Tamil and the Muslim communities.
The way in which the leadership of the Up-Country Tamil community has negotiated its
political relationship with the state, moving away from the militants politics of the Tamils
in the North-East, constitutes an interesting model. The Ceylon Workers’ Congress
(CWC) was initially a member of the Tamil United Front (TUF), formed in 1975, to
advance minority Tamil grievances. In 1976, the TUF adopted a militant programme of
action to mobilize the Tamils for national self-determination and the establishment,
through peaceful means, of a separate Tamil state. With this change in Tamil nationalist
politics, the CWC left the TUF and soon joined the government of the United National
Party government which came to power in 1977. What is noteworthy is that the CWC
chose the strategy of coalition building with the Sinhalese political establishment at a
time when the mainstream Tamil politics was in the process of shifting towards the path
of armed struggle. The CWC has continued this policy throughout the subsequent years,
joining UNP and PA led governments, without maintaining strict partisanship with either.
For example, the CWC contested the 1994 parliamentary elections in a coalition with the
UNP, but after the elections joined the PA to form a coalition regime. Again in 2004, the
CWC contested the parliamentary election in alliance with the UNP, but after the
elections joined the UPFA government. This flexibility in entering coalition alliances
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