Two centuries since the first Tamils of Indian-origin were taken to Sri Lanka, to work on British coffee estates, their fight for the right to a life of dignity and equality continues in Sri Lanka as well as in Tamil Nadu. Known as “hill country Tamils”, these people of Indian-origin, mostly lower caste labourers, were first taken to Sri Lanka in 1823. As the coffee plantations were blighted by a disease, the British switched to tea cultivation in the 1860s, says M. Chandrasekaran, former South Indian secretary of the National Conference of Repatriates and general secretary of the Hill Country People’s Repatriates Rehabilitation Association. Subsequently, as the Sinhalese people resented the growing Tamil population, India and Sri Lanka began negotiations to “repatriate” a significant population of the hill country Tamils to India.
TANTEA opened
The Srimavo-Shastri Pact, signed in 1964, and the Srimavo-Gandhi Pact, signed a decade later (both between the heads of Sri Lanka and India), led to the repatriation of around five lakh Sri Lankan Tamils, who were re-settled in parts of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, Mr. Chandrasekaran says. The Tamil Nadu government set up the Tamil Nadu Tea Plantation Corporation Limited (TANTEA) in the Nilgiris and Valparai for the livelihood of the returnees. P. Krishnan, 72, who was born at Hatton in Sri Lanka’s Nuwara Eliya district, remembers his journey to India as a 19-year-old in 1970 with his family. “We were immediately tasked with clearing forests around Coonoor for the TANTEA estates to be set up,” says Mr. Krishnan, who has retired from TANTEA, but still lives in the estate housing at Coonoor.
