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For other usage of this term see the disambiguation page Sri Lanka Tamils

The Sri Lanka Tamils of Indian Tamil origin or Hill country Tamils, Up-country Tamils or simply Indian Tamils are descended from indentured workers sent from South India to Sri Lanka in the 19th and 20th centuries to work in coffee, tea and rubber plantations. They are distinguished from the Malabar Tamils, or Ceylon Tamils of Malabar origin, a name used, especially during British times, to refer to the Jaffna Tamils. The Malabar Tamils were Indian workers brought to Sri Lanka from the Malabar Coast by the Dutch East India Company (VOC), to work the tobacco plantations of the peninsula which was at that time very sparsley populated.

These Tamil-speakers live in the central highlands, also known as the Malayakam or Hill Country. Although they are all termed as Tamils today, some also have Telugu and Malayalee origins as well as diverse South Indian caste origins.

Contents 1 Sri Lanka's distinct Tamil-speaking communities 2 History 2.1 Initial recruitment 2.2 Social structure 2.3 Caste orientation of a plantation 2.4 Survival of customs 2.5 Religious patterns 2.6 Folk deities 2.7 Temple societies 3 Community Development 3.1 Disenfranchisement of the Indian Tamils 3.2 Moral Issues 3.3 Cheap captive labor for cash crops 3.4 Repatriation and rebirth 4 References 5 External links 6 Prominent Hill Country Tamils

Sri lanka's main Tamil-speaking community is made up of Sri Lanka Tamils, mainly resident in the North, East and the Colombo suburbs. Hill country Tamils differ from these older communities by their dialect, culture, and socio-economic conditions. They are resident in the Central, Uva and Sabaragamuva provinces. The Hill-country Tamils refused to support the separatist political doctrine introduced by the Tamil Liberation Front (TULF) in Vaddukkodei (Batakotte ^[2]). Many hill country Tamils have intermarried with other communities including Sri Lankan Tamils and generally mark them as Sri Lankan Tamils in the an annual census^[1]. Historically the upper castes (see Vellalar) amongst Sri Lankan Tamils who dominated the political arena had discriminated against hill country Tamils based on caste prejudices and even opposed their assimilation( ^[3], p 7, also Donoughmore Commission).

Although there is evidence of various Sri Lankan monarchs and Portuguese and Dutch colonial authorities recruiting workers from India, the current Hill Country Tamils derive their origins from a British colonial era project. Many South Indian recruits who came prior to the British effort have assimilated as part of the Sinhalese or the native Sri Lankan Tamil communities (See Salagama, Karave and Durave)

According to Professor Bertram Bastianpillai, workers around the Tamil Nadu cities of Thirunelveli, Tiruchi, Madurai and Tanjore were recruited by Governor Sir Edward Barnes on the request of George Bird, a pioneer planter.

The social structure of the plantations strongly resembles the South Indian rural social structure. This community is rigidly bound by caste system. In a plantation the tea factory is the center of activities. It stands majestically in the central part of the plantation.

The office adjoins this and these are surrounded by the quarters of the staff members such as clerks, tea makers, conductors, petty accountants or kanakkupillais, and supervisors. The bungalows of the planter and his assistants are in an isolated but peaceful area. These will be in close proximity to the office. The dwellings of the workers called line rooms are situated a little further away from the factories.

Those who are considered to be of higher castes such as Vellalas, Kallar, Agamudaiyar, Maravar, Naidus, Reddiars and Nairs occupy the first row of line rooms. They perform respectable jobs such as factory work and grinding of tea. They work as minor employees too. Even though they belong to the labour category they are influential among conductors, tea makers, kanganies or supervisors and other officials.

The workers considered low castes live in the dwellings that are away from the center and these dwellings are called distant or lower Lines. This group consists of Pallar, Paraiyars, Sakkiliar, washers and barbers. The yard sweepers and changers of clothes are in the lowest rank.

Even today they receive very meager facilities from the management. These groups follow the customs, traditions, and festivities of the South Indian Tamil ancestors. The traditional musical instruments such as Thappu and Parai are used. Folk dances such as Kavadi, Kummi and Karaga Attam are performed.

Folk dramas called Koothu in their various forms such as Ponnar Koothu, Sangaran Koothu, Arujunan Thabas, Kaman Koothu are still prevalent among them along with Silambadi as an important feature.

This community is eternally poverty stricken, continuously exploited, penalized by humiliations and cruelly afflicted by communal violence. Still amongst all these difficulties, they uphold their traditions, heritage and arts as fervently as possible. It is said that the plantation labourers are born in debts, live and die in debts. They cherish their cultural aspects and religious believes and preserve their distinctiveness.

In general they use Hindu beliefs to guide their day to day lives. They have built temples and places of worship for their deities on estates and in villages, towns and other places within Sri Lanka to which they have migrated.

By custom, when they arrive at a place where they intend to reside, these immigrants would institute, under a banyan or bo tree, a triangular shaped stone or figure of a deity, plant a weapon of a popularly worshiped god such as a spear, trident or sword and worshiped these. The main deities worshiped by these people to this day are, in order of popularity, the goddess Mariyamman, Murugan and his consorts, Valli and Theivanai, Pillayar or Ganesh, Sivan and his wife Parvathi, Vishnu and Letchumi [Laxmi], and the goddess of wisdom Saraswathie.

No sooner were these migrant workers brought to Thalai Mannar, the port at which they landed on their arrival by boat from South India, they were herded via Kurunagela to camps in the town of Matale. There they were quarantined for a period of a week or more, examined for infectious diseases such as small pox, cholera or typhoid and vaccinated them against these diseases before they were sent to Kandy, from where they were dispersed to locations where they would either work on estates already established by a pervious gang of workers or clear the jungle to establish new ones. In one of the camps of Matale, they instituted a stone as an icon of the goddess,Mariamman, also known as the small-pox goddess, under a Vilva tree and worshipped her there. At this very location where the worship of her began in 1820, the now-famous Matale Sri Muthumariamman Temple was built in 1852.

The trading community of the Nattukotai Chettiars introduced the worship of Murugan in his form as Lord Kathiresan at Matale and were to subsequently build the Kathiresan temple at Matale. The annual festival of this temple is celebrated in the month of July. Devotees of the plantation sector walk from the tea estates and hometowns they live in to Kathirkamam, a place considered sacred by both Buddhists and Hindus, in the South of Sri Lanka, where Murugan is worshiped in the form of Skanda.

Deepavali, Pongal, Tamil New Year are celebrated as festivals by them.

Each caste has its own deity based on caste predecessors and are worshiped by these descendants as guardian angels. Example the Kallar cast had Nallananpillai Perumal as their guardian angel. They make vows and sacrifices to this deity. They submit offering on a particular date at a particular time annually. Mostly the night before Deepavali is set aside for worshiping the predecessors.

Deities such as Madasamy, Muniandi, Kali, Madurai Veeran, Sangili Karuppan, Vaalraja, Vairavar, Veerabathran, Sudalai Madan, Nagaphooshani Ammann and Roda Mini are also worshiped.

There are 104 registered Hindu temples in the Nuwara Eliya District, 153 in Kandy region and 62 in Matale. Religious schools or Araa Nerri Padasaligal are conducted throughout the Central Province and Registered schools of such nature are, Nuwara Eliya 22, Kandy 54 and Matale 11. A considerable number of Hindu associations and Institutions have been established and are functioning actively. There is a serious effort at conversions to other religions as well. Many have converted to Christianity and Islam. Hindu organizations such as the Vishva Hindu Parishad tries to stem the tide of conversions.

This community was a closed community confining themselves to the plantations. While it actively contributed and contributes to the economic well being of this country, their own social economic conditions are amongst the worst in the country. Being isolated and ghettoed within the heartland of Sri Lanka and also linguistically isolated from the Sinhalese villagers who live in the valleys. They were the classic example of captive labour whose life in its entity was decided by the employers. Any social relationship or cultural ties they had were only among themselves or with India.

In the 1940s the trade union movement had galvanized the plantation workers into a militant working class. They joined hands with the Lanka Sama Samaja (or Socialist) Party, which carried the message of a working class struggle for liberation from the exploitation by mostly British plantation companies. With independence things began to change drastically for the plantation workers. They were the first community marked out for discrimination by the new state of Ceylon in 1948.

In the elections to the first parliament of Ceylon, seven Indian Tamil representatives were returned to Parliament. The plantation workers voted either for Indian Tamil candidates or for Lanka Sama Samaja Party candidates. Dr.N.M.Perera was the leader of the opposition in the 1st parliament and the Lanka Sama Samaja Party was the second largest party after the United National Party.

THe Donoughmore Commission of 1928 recommended universal franchise, and this was also meant to include the plantation workers as well. Page 57 of the report proposed "In the first place we consider it very desirable that a qualification of five years residence in the Island (allowing the temporary absence not exceeding eight months in all during the five years period) should be introduced in order that the privilege of voting should be confined to those who have an abiding interest in the country or who may be regarded as permanently settled in the Island.... this condition will be of particular importance in its application to the Indian immigrant population. Secondly, we consider that the registration of voters should not be compulsory or automatic but should be restricted to those who apply for it...". However, the very concept of Universal Franchise was anathema to most of the political leaders of that era. Ponnambalam Ramanathan, a highly respected leader, opposed universal franchise as he felt that the caste system was an integral part of the Hindu way of life(^[4], p16), and led a delegation to London seeking to legally enshrine the caste hierarchy, and dethrone universal franchise. The Indian Tamils were also considered to be very low caste by the Colombo elits. The Kandyan Sinhalese also objected to the enfranchisement of the Indian estate workers, not merely on caste, but mostly because their electoral base would be diluted by a large influx of Indian Tamil votes. They also argued that the Tea estates were land plundered by the British, and that the Kandyan peasents have been driven from their traditional lands, and that such injustices would be compounded if the Indian workers were legitimized. Governor Stanley introduced restrictions on the citizenship of Indian workers to make the Donoughmore proposals acceptable to the Ceylonese leaders. Thus the first state council of 1931, which consisted of many Tamil members including S. P. Vityalingam (Talavakelle), Peri Sunderam (Hatton), S. M Ananthan, M. M. Subramanium, R. Saravanamuttu, G. G. Ponnambalam and others (p 36 ^[4]), as well as the Kandyan Sinhalese and the Low-country sinhalese members, agreed to not to enfranchise the majority of the Indian estate workers.

A decade later, the Soulbury Commission which paved the way for the independence of Ceylon recognized the "...anxieties arising out of the likelihood of large-scale enfranchisement of the Indian immigrants", The Commission, therefore, left the existing basis of franchise in Sri Lanka undisturbed" (^[5] p. 217).D. S. Senanayake had led the 1941 talks with Sir G. S. Bajpai of India and had reach agreement on modalities of repatriation and citizenship, although they were finally not ratified by Nehru. D. S. Senanayake had expressed the wish to "embrace all Indian workers who integrate into the country as members of the Ceylonese nation", The Soulbury constitution came into effect in 1946. In trying to cobble an all-party cabinet inclusive of the Tamils, led by G. G. Ponnambalam, the Sinhalese nationalist groups led by S. W. R. D Bandaranaike, the Kandyan Sinhalese, Senanayake had to find a compromise formula. The 1947 elections had returned 6 representatives from the Ceylon Indian Congress (CIC), based on the votes of the franchised Indian workers and hill-country Tamils. Although this worried the Kandyans, the main reason for Senanayake and others to review their attitude to Indian workers was the growing threat of Marxist infilteration into estate trade unions. In this he had won the concurrence of G. G. Ponnambalam for the second citizenship act which introduced strong restrictions on the Indian estate workers becoming citizens of the new nation. Senanayake, who had been very favourable to easy citizenship to the Indian workers had increasingly modified his views in the face of Marixist trade union activity. The Bracegirdle affaire (^[6] p539) was regarded as the harbinger of such dangers. The fear of left-wing politics began to grow in the minds of Ceylonese politicians of the era, as the militancy of the left movement gave a false picture of their real support in the country. The Colonial government responded to the agitation of the Leftists by imprisoning N. M. Perera, Colvin R. de Silva and other Left leaders. Anti Marxist feelings were shared by the main-stream Sinhalese and Tamil leaders alike. Ponnambalam's decision to support the new citizenship act which introduced further restrictions on the enfranchisement of Indian workers was supported by the other Tamil speaking members of the cabinet, and is viewed to be a constructive, if controversial step(^[6], Ch. 36). The criticism in the house was leveled by a few Tamil members of the upper chamber (senate), like Senator Natesan.

As the first Prime Minister, D.S. Senanayake, leader of the United national Party (UNP), feared the strong possibilities of Marxist disruption of government and commenced the task of weakening the Marxist parties and their associate organizations. He feared that the estate workers would be organized by the Marxists. Thus the newly independent first cabinet introduced the Ceylon Citizenship Act of 1948, the Indian-Pakistani Citizenship act of 1947 and amended the parliamentary elections act and denied citizenship to the majority of the Indian Tamils. This was in effect a continuation of the older, harsher status quo of the Indian workers in the 1930s, prior to the Donoughmore constitution. Ponnambalam and Senanayake were strongly criticized by the Marxist groups as well as a break-way Tamil ultra-nationalist group which formed the "Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK)", or "Lanka Tamil Sovereignist Party", rendered into English with the more moderate name "Federal party". The ITAK branded Ponnambalam a "traitor", and Senanayake a "sinhala extremist", although Senanayke's actions were based on his fear of Marxist control of the plantation sector.

As the president of the Ceylon Indian Congress (CIC), S. Thondaman had contested the Nuwara Eliya seat at the 1947 general election and won. His party put forward seven candidates in the plantation electorates and six of them were returned. Thus Thondaman became the spokesperson of the plantation workers. THe CIC sat with the opposition which included the Marxist parties. He opposed the 1948 citizenship act. Mr.Thondaman supported the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP)in the 1960 elections; after the victory of the SLFP he was appointed to the House of Representative as a nominated Member of Parliament. However, he opposed the 1964 Sirima-Shastri Indo-Ceylon citizenship act. After the victory of the UNP in 1965, S.Thondaman was named as appointed Member of Parliament by the UNP.

The J. R. Jayawardene government which came to power in 1977 rectified the existing short comings of the Indian citizenship act and granted citizenship to all Indian Estate workers. Even at that time, Thondaman was the leader of the Ceylon Workers Congress, the party of the Hill-country Tamils, and had become a skillful player of minority-party politics. He had avoided joining with the Tamil United Liberation Front TULF resolutions of 1974 which had continued with the policies of the ITAK. Thus the hill-country Tamils have successfully charted a course of cooperating with successive Sri Lankan governments.

Since the introduction of universal franchise in 1931, strong traditions of social welfare in Sri Lanka have given the island very high indicators of physical well being. Impressive national statistics tended to hide the existence of deprived pockets within the population and the most deprived population group has been the plantation labour. It has been economically, politically and socially deprived, in spite of the agitation of the Trade Union led by Thondaman. Another parallel group which was equally deprived, and made the solution of the Indian worker problem more difficult, was the equally unfortunate lot of the Kandyan peasents who had been driven out in the process of creating the plantations. Many of them had become displaced persons and slowly perished in the Uva-Wellasa jungles.

It should also be noted that modern states like the USA, or Switzerland, have large alien workers who have no franchise. They have no educational or health benefits, unless they pay exhorbitantly for them. They certainly do not have elected or appointed representatives ( like Thondaman) to plead their cause. The alien Mexican workers of the USA represent a tip of the iceberg which conceals a large illegal immigrant-worker community. Thus we must grant that the policies of the Ceylonese and Sri Lankan governments compare quite favourably when judged against those of "advanced" rich nations of the 21st century.

Based on the cultivation of cash crops, it is even today dominant in the country's economy. It is a major earner of foreign exchange and the largest employer. Cheap labour is one of the essential ingredients of its success. Hence these immigrants were bonded and under paid. In 1921 workers were empowered to break this bonds of indebtedness tying them to the estates. The minimum wages ordinance was extended to plantation labour in 1927 marginally raising the wages that had not changed since the 19th century.

This daily wages was 41 Cts. in 1933. Owing to trade union activities it was raised to Rs 17/83 in 1983, Rs 72/24 in 1993 and became Rs 101 in 1998. The wages of female workers was lesser than males but has been equalized since 1984. Even though there was an increase in wages, the living wages are not sufficient to meet their day to day needs and they are always indebted. Hence they are poverty stricken, socially backward, politically neglected and communally terrorized.

The plantations were nationalized under the 1972 land reform law and its 1975 amendment. The state owned plantations are managed by the Sri Lanka Plantation Corporation & Janatha Estate Development Board. The nationalization did not result in any basic change on the plantation sector. The state has been forced to take a greater interest in the health, housing and general well being of the labourers. Hence estate schools were nationalized and brought into the general educational system with the grant of Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) many schools were built. This helped the slight growth of literacy rates. As unemployment increased in the plantation sector youths looked for other avenues. A considerable number of "Indian" Tamil girls are employed in garment factories. Some seek greener pastures in the Middle East as housemaids. So we could observe the Indian Tamils not only towards urban areas but foreign nations too.

The Srima-Shastri pact of 1964 and Indira-Sirimavo supplementary agreement of 1974 paved the way for the repatriation of 600,000 persons of Indian origin to India. Another 375,000 persons were to accepted as citizens of Sri Lanka which made them enter the polity. These repatriation agreements were the harbingers of the destruction of this community, which had evolved into a composite group with a distinct culture of its own. In the fifties and sixties this community was clamoring for education and recognition of its distinctive culture. This brought in the emergence of a community consciousness and the artesian of a distinct community. An educated middle class comprising of teachers, trade unionists and other professional began to make its appearance.

There was a vigorous campaign for social ameliorations and increased educational facilities. There was a growing spirit of resistance. People destroyed Indian passports and refused to go to India. Repatriation was resisted and cries that fundamental rights cannot be smothered were raised. International opinion was canvassed against deprivation of citizenship rights. The plantation people who were not prepared to leave, destitute, the land whose prosperty they had built . They were prepared to fraternise within the Sinhalese and accept Sri Lankan leadership in the trade union movement. They eschewed a separate state as a political solution. In the general election of 1977 they were able to elect 11 candidates.

This helped the emergence of the plantation people as a political force, but they were faced with communal violence in 1977 and 1983. In 1984-5, to stop India intervening in Sri Lankan affairs, the UNP government eventually granted citizenship right to all stateless persons. The late Savumiamoorthy Thondaman was instrumental in using this electoral strength in assuring the socioeconomic conditions of hill country Tamils to improve.

• ^ Socio economic conditions of Indian origin Tamils by V. Radhakrishnan
• ^ Plantation Tamils – The Oppressed People of Sri Lanka by S. Makenthiran
• ^ In serach of New identity - Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka

• Plight of repatriated Hill Country Tamils in India

• Muttiah Muralitharan - Sri Lanka's prominent cricketer and world record holder
• Savumiamoorthy Thondaman - Post-ndependence politician [2]
• M.G. Ramachandran - Sri Lankan-born Indian politician
• Natesa Iyer - Pre-independence politician
• Arumugam Thondaman - Sri Lankan politician
• P. Chandrasekaran - Sri Lankan politician
• Prof. Mookkiah- Professor in Geography at University of Peradeniya
• S.Balakrishnan - Founding member of MIRJE Sri Lanka
• P.P. Sivapragasam - President of Human Development Organization, A Human Rights Advocate on minority rights who advocate Citizenship rights in UN level.