For decades, groups of Sri Lankan Tamils have come to Tamil Nadu, fleeing war and hostilities on the island. The 16 Sri Lankan Tamils who arrived on the Rameswaram coast in two batches on March 22 were, however, different.
They were economic refugees, trying to escape a dire situation in Sri Lanka, which is reeling under a severe economic crisis.
Indian intelligence agencies believe that as unemployment and skyrocketing inflation drive more and more people to desperation in the coming days and weeks, the numbers of these refugees are likely to only increase.
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Tamil Nadu, a natural destination
Barely 30 km away across the shallow Palk Strait, India has long appeared within reach, especially to Tamils in Northern and Eastern Sri Lanka. Ethnic affinity has made Tamil Nadu inviting, either as asylum or as a point of transit to the West, mostly Europe — where a large and influential Tamil diaspora has gathered over the decades of war and political turbulence in Sri Lanka.
People and political parties in Tamil Nadu have been traditionally welcoming of Sri Lankan refugees with similar ethnic and cultural roots. In the 1970s and 80s, India trained and armed the Tamil rebels, and the sea crossing presented no major threat to the illegal immigrants from Sri Lanka. This situation changed radically after Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by the LTTE in 1991.
History of Sri Lankan refugees
While Tamil-origin refugees from Northern and Eastern Sri Lanka had been arriving in India from long before the 1980s, their flow increased significantly after 1983, when ethnic clashes began on the island between the majority Sinhala Buddhist ruling class and the Indian-armed Tamil Tigers.
Those who arrived before 1983 were mainly Indian-origin Tamils whose forefathers had migrated to Sri Lanka to work in the tea plantations. Their arrival was facilitated by an agreement between Prime Ministers Lal Bahadur Shastri and Sirimavo Bandaranaike to allow 9,75,000 people of Indian origin in Sri Lanka to become citizens of the country of their choice.
Many of the 4.6 lakh repatriations from Sri Lanka before 1982 travelled to Europe; others married Indians in an effort to resolve their crises of identity.
From 1983, the Sri Lankan Tamils arrived in multiple waves. The first of these was between July 1983 and 1987, when 1.34 lakh Sri Lankan Tamils reached India, pushed by anti-Tamil riots in Sri Lanka after an LTTE ambush killed 13 Sri Lankan soldiers, and pulled by the India-Sri Lanka Accord. In the two years from 1987, however, some 25,600 refugees returned to Sri Lanka, according to official records.
The second wave of arrivals began after the war flared up in June 1990, and about 1,22,000 Tamils fled the island. Between 1991 and 1995, some 54,000 refugees were repatriated to Sri Lanka; this was also the period in which Sri Lankan Tamils faced pressures in Tamil Nadu after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.
The third wave of arrivals began in 1995 and continued until 2002, a period that witnessed intense fighting in Northern Sri Lanka. The exodus turned into a flood in 2008-09, the final years of the war. Refugees continued to arrive until 2013.
Tamil refugee numbers
As per latest records, about 19,000 Sri Lankan families — or 58,822 individuals, including about 10,000 children below the age of 8 — live in 108 refugee camps set up for Sri Lankan Tamils in Tamil Nadu. Another 34,087 individuals with refugee certificates live outside the camps.
There are also individuals who have overstayed in India, those who are in transit to Europe, former Tamil militants who have been sheltered in special camps, and refugees who have been caught by Indian agencies while attempting an illegal sea passage from Indian waters to Europe or Australia.
Their life in Tamil Nadu
Many Tamil nationalists in Sri Lanka consider the DMK as a betrayer of Tamils because it was part of the UPA regime that aided the brutal last phase of the war in which the Sri Lankan army killed thousands of civilians. Ordinary people fleeing the island however, are more favourably disposed towards the M K Stalin government, which has taken several “pro-refugee” steps over the past year.
Despite continuous discussions on the Sri Lankan Tamil issue in Tamil Nadu politics for decades, not much was done to improve the quality of life in the refugee camps. Most camps are ramshackle open prisons with families crammed into one or two rooms that they received in the 1980s or 1990s. Many refugees who work in hotels or other sectors, or as daily wage labourers, are watched by the Q-branch, the state intelligence and investigative unit tracking terrorists and other radicalised individuals.
The refugees have benefitted from the general social welfare schemes in the state, be it the free rice or periodic festival incentives and “kits”. The head of each refugee family gets a monthly allowance of at least Rs 1,000, and monthly assistance for spouses and children below age 12. The DMK government announced a scheme to build 3,510 houses for Sri Lankan refugees, renovate 7,469, and provide financial assistance to refugee students for higher education.
New economic refugees
The collapse of tourism following the Easter attacks of 2019 and the Covid-19 pandemic has wrecked the Sri Lankan economy. The country is heavily import-dependent, and with foreign exchange reserves crashing, there have been acute shortages of food items, fuel, and other essentials. Staples like rice and milk have become unaffordable for large numbers of people.
Local people in Mannar and Jaffna, the Tamil populated areas in the north, say many are ready to travel to India. “They are waiting for conducive factors such as the availability of boats and the position of the Sri Lankan navy and the Indian Coast Guard…,” a source in Mannar said. Several sources said people are keenly following the news from Tamil Nadu about the way those who have reached India are being treated.
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