DiplomacyMadras State (Congress era)
Ceylon Citizenship Act leaves Indian Tamils stateless
· Colombo
Passed soon after Ceylon became independent, a citizenship law shut out most Indian Tamil plantation workers, descendants of migrants from the Madras Presidency.
Ceylon became independent on 4 February 1948, and within months its government brought forward the Ceylon Citizenship Bill. Parliament approved it on 20 August 1948, and it took effect on 15 November 1948. Indian Tamils, roughly 11 percent of the island's population, found its conditions impossible for most of them to satisfy. A further act in 1949 took away their franchise. Hundreds of thousands of people of Indian origin were left stateless, a situation that produced the Sirima-Shastri Pact of 1964 and the return of many families to Tamil Nadu.
