A community marches to change course

T

his year’s prospects for Sri Lanka’s tea industry are brighter than ever, with most observers predicting that the country’s main export and foreign revenue earner will more than recover from the setbacks it recorded in 2022. Yet the fortunes of the community that toils in Sri Lanka’s tea estates are nearly as dismal as they were two centuries ago — and its members are rejecting it as an inevitable fate. 

Just recently, hundreds of Sri Lanka’s Malaiyaha Tamil community finished a march that began in the northwestern coast of Mannar Island and ended in Matale, a city in the country’s central province. The symbolic walk, which spanned nearly 250 kilometers and took 16 days to complete, was meant not only to retrace the steps the Malaiyaha Tamils’ ancestors took 200 years ago when they came to Sri Lanka, but also to underscore the struggles of their community and their aspirations for a better future.  

Distinct from the Sri Lankan Tamils in the north and east who were caught in a decades-long separatist uprising, the Malaiyaha Tamils have a deeply intertwined history with Sri Lanka’s import-export economy. In the early 1820s, British companies brought Tamils from India to the island country to work in tea, coffee, and rubber plantations as indentured labor. Today many of the estimated one million Malaiyaha Tamils — also called Upcountry or Hill Tamils — still work at tea plantations under what many say are slave conditions.

“The Malaiyaha Tamil community played a pivotal role in Sri Lanka’s economy,” says Suresh Jeewaratnam, a social activist from the community. “However, they were discriminated against and not given the same rights and privileges as the rest of the Sri Lankans.”

Indeed, despite being the island country’s second largest ethnic group at the dawn of its independence, the Malaiyaha Tamils were unjustly denied citizenship at the time. This was further exacerbated by the Citizenship Acts of 1948 and 1949, which not only stripped them of their legal status, but also facilitated the repatriation (beginning in 1967) of approximately 40 percent of the community to India. 

Such forced repatriation significantly diminished the Malaiyaha Tamils’ political standing and socioeconomic well-being, perpetuating their marginalization. The longstanding issue of citizenship would not be fully addressed until 2003, but the Malaiyaha Tamils are still unable to fully enjoy their rights, and are further burdened by significant socioeconomic challenges. Asserts Jeewaratnam: “The government continuously treats the Malaiyaha community as second-class citizens.”

Plan fails to pan out

To be fair, there has been a National Plan of Action for the Social Development of the Plantation Community (2016-2020). The plan aimed to improve the living conditions of the community that made up 4.2 percent of Sri Lanka’s 23 million-strong population, through initiatives in education, healthcare, and housing, among others. It was partially implemented, but eventually faced challenges and was abandoned after the 2019 regime change. 

This is not unusual for Sri Lanka, where successive governments introduce national action plans that are either partially implemented or abandoned, or even forgotten after a regime change. For the Malaiyaha Tamils, however, this has meant a continuation of poverty rates that far exceed the national average. 

Data from the Central Bank of Sri Lanka show that the estate sector is experiencing a significantly higher poverty rate of 33.8 percent compared to the national rates of 14.3 percent. While the tea industry earns the country hundreds of millions of dollars each year, plantation workers are still receiving LKR 700 (US$2.15) for a workday that often stretches beyond eight hours. That is, if they are paid at all; many are forced by sheer need to ask for wage advances from the estate management and end up in debt bondage. 

A 2022 paper reviewing the human rights situation of Malaiyaha Tamils noted that laws and regulations related to the plantation sector “have not been amended in keeping with the evolving context, and are a contributory factor for the marginalization of the hill country community for centuries.”

“Malaiyaha Tamils are also isolated from mainstream livelihood programs and have little or no access to alternative sources for earning extra income,” added the report by the Movement for Plantation Peoples’ Land Rights (MPPLR). “Due to the denial of land and housing, they are unable to access government subsidy programs for cultivation, assistance for small-scale cottage industries, self-employment opportunities, loans for housing construction, and more. All these deprivations and violations (have led) this community to abject poverty, malnutrition, poor performance in education, as well as health and hygiene challenges.”

Some half a million Malaiyaha Tamils currently reside in colonial-era plantation line rooms that are devoid of essential amenities like water and sanitation. In fact, as late as 2015, the World Bank was reporting that only 33.2 percent of the estate sector had access to safe drinking water, in stark contrast to the national average of 88.5 percent. 

Citing government statistics, the MPPLR report said that in the estates, the percentage of underweight children (30 percent), low weight births (31 percent), and maternal malnutrition (33 percent) were “high in comparison to urban and rural areas.”

In addition, apparently inadequate infrastructure and support have resulted in the exclusion of many plantation-based children from the national education system for extended periods, impeding their socioeconomic mobility and prospects for a better future. Not surprisingly, while Sri Lanka has achieved near-universal primary education, a different picture emerges from the estate sector. Dropout rates at the primary level stand at 1.2 percent in urban areas and 0.8 percent in rural areas; within the estate sector, the rate is at 3.8 percent, as reported by the 2016 Household Income and Expenditure Survey conducted by the Department of Census and Statistics.  

Meanwhile, World Bank data indicated substantial disparities in land ownership, with Malaiyaha Tamils accounting for a meager 36.5-percent ownership rate, compared to the national average of 84.4 percent.

Deep scars

Decades of being denied recognition as citizens have also scarred the community deeply and left members still vulnerable to social stigmatization. Remarks Jeewaratnam: “Even after 200 years, the government has yet to understand and implement specific measures to remedy this wrong. This injustice is not just a violation of their democratic and fundamental rights; it’s a disregard for a history spanning over two centuries. The fact that people who have contributed so much are still ignored speaks volumes about the ongoing injustice they face.”

Within the plantation community, longstanding social stigma and negative stereotypes about Malaiyaha Tamils have created an ongoing atmosphere of fear and inferiority. Years of being excluded from public governance have also deeply influenced their view of formal institutions as ineffective and hard to approach, leading to a sense of disempowerment. At the same time, a lack of proficiency in the Sinhala language, particularly among older generations, adds to their feeling of being left out, especially in institutions where business is conducted in Sinhala. This is even as Tamil is regarded as the other official language of Sri Lanka.

The recent march, however, seems to have made the Malaiyaha Tamils more determined to demand that they be noticed at last and treated better. Much of that confidence comes not only from the reflection afforded by the long days of walking, but also from the sense of unity and hope that filled the air as community members were greeted by various ethnic groups and civil society actors who had thoughtfully provided refreshments and arranged performances while demonstrating other acts of support and camaraderie along the way.

“Many religious and ethnic communities showed their solidarity and support,” says Suresh Nadesan, a member of the community and executive director of Uva Shakthi Foundation, which works on plantation community issues. “They also promised to support our demands. This has increased our resolve.” 

At the end of the march on August 12, the organizers released the Matale Declaration that crystallized the community’s aspirations for meaningful citizenship. Their demands encompass acknowledgment of their history, struggle, and contributions, as well as recognition as a constituent people of post-independent Sri Lanka with a distinct identity on par with other main communities. 

They also called for affirmative action on education, health, and social safety measures to achieve parity with national averages; a living wage, decent work, legal protection, and equal pay for men and women workers; secure tenure for housing and livelihoods.

Lastly, they sought the preservation and promotion of Malaiyaha culture through the equal use and parity of status for the Tamil language; equal access to government services; demarcation of plantation human settlements as new villages; and protection of domestic workers.

While the list is long and ambitious, Malaiyaha Tamils believe their demands are long overdue. Apparently inspired by the march, which he describes as a “historic journey,” community activist Anthony Jesudasan pledges: “We will work toward these demands.”◉

With additional reporting by Sabra Zahid, program officer of the Asia Democracy Network.