75th Independence
Lured by greener pastures, and then exploited
View(s):By Jaya Peri Sundaram
Around the latter half of the 19th Century, Ceylon under British rule saw coffee, its then major export, affected by a deadly disease that destroyed the entire crop. The British swiftly replaced it with tea. Tea being more labour intensive, they had to find the workforce to tend the new crop and hand pick the tea leaves.
This they did by ‘importing’ cheap and abundant labour from neighbouring South India. Those mainly in today’s Tamil Nadu were fed stories of a better life in Ceylon. Employment agents or ‘recruiters’ convinced hundreds of thousands from South India, to make the journey to Ceylon.
Tea pluckers: A photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron
The trek was arduous and came at a heavy cost. They landed at Talaimannar and trekked by foot to the plantations in the central hills. Some estimates put the death toll, usually from malaria, snake bite or sheer exhaustion, at around a third of the people who landed in Talaimannar. Once in the plantations, they were housed in cheaply built, back-to-back line rooms, unventilated and lacking toilets and pipe water, where entire families lived in a tiny, single room. Thus began the story of plantation workers of Indian origin in Ceylon, later Sri Lanka.
This population of workers of Indian origin grew exponentially and continued to be exploited. Living conditions did not improve; they continued be paid measly wages. The country’s political leadership, the Sinhalese mainly led by D. B. Jayatilleka, D.S. Senanayake and E.W. Perera and the Tamils led by Ponnambalam Arunachalam and Ramanathan Ponnambalam, having formed the Ceylon National Congress (CNC) were busy battling the British for Ceylon’s independence, and the Tamils of Indian origin were a forgotten lot, socially, economically and politically, despite being the producers of the ‘Black Gold’ – a major part of the country’s economic output.
It was against such a backdrop that Periannan Sundaram, better known as Peri Sundaram, emerged as a patriot, freedom fighter and workers’ champion to become a legitimate leader of the people of Indian origin notably Indian Tamil workers in the plantations and elsewhere in Ceylon.
A Cambridge educated scholar and Barrister, Peri Sundaram was the son of a head ‘Kangani’ of Nellumalai Estate, Madulkelle. With family support and through his own drive and initiative, he got himself educated at Trinity College Kandy, S. Thomas College and Law College in Colombo, and thereafter Cambridge University and Gray’s Inn in the UK. This background equipped him to gain acceptance and fit in with the national leadership at that time, as a founder member of CNC.
In 1919, he was Founder and Secretary of ‘The Ceylon Workers’ Welfare League’, the first labour union formed in Ceylon, and also Founder and Secretary of the ‘Ceylon Workers Federation’. Thereafter, being elected uncontested to the seat of Hatton at the first-ever elections to State Council in 1931, he served as Ceylon’s first Minister of Labour, Industry and Commerce, driving workforce legislative reforms to provide legal protection for workers from exploitation and unfair labour practices. He was instrumental in the enactment of landmark Trade Union, Workman’s Compensation and Minimum Wages ordinances.
Having met with Indian leaders Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, Peri Sundaram was inspired by their struggle against the British. Nehru suggested the formation of an umbrella organisation for the advancement and welfare of the people of Indian origin bringing together the 25 disparate organisations that represented various people of Indian origin at the time. This encouraged him to form the Ceylon Indian Congress (CIC) in 1939. A year later, he formed the largest registered trade union in the country, the ‘CIC Labour Union’, consisting mostly of plantation workers of Indian origin. Peri Sundaram was elected President of both organisations.
Even today, do the tea pluckers' socio- economic conditions remain ‘second class’?
Ceylon was granted independence on February 4, 1948 in a peaceful transition of power, but the Ceylon Citizenship Act of 1948 and the Indian and Pakistani Residents (Citizenship) Act No.3 of 1949 passed by Parliament deprived those of Indian origin of Ceylonese citizenship.
In the early ’50s, the CIC Labour Union was renamed the Ceylon Workers’ Congress (CWC) which continued the task of fighting for plantation workers of Indian origin who remained ‘stateless’.
Peri Sundaram passed away on February 4, 1957, but by then he had groomed a protégé, Savumiamoorthy Thondaman to be an able successor. ‘Thonda’ as he came to be known, easily fitted into the role of leading the CWC. The son of the head ‘Kangani’ of the Ramboda estate, Thondaman compensated for his lack of finesse and eloquence with an astute mind and sense of political pragmatism that would stand him and his community in good stead.
Meanwhile, at the national level, there were attempts to resolve the ‘stateless’ issue. The Sirima-Shasthri Pact signed between then Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike and her Indian counterpart, Lal Bahadur Shasthri on October 30,1964 would grant Ceylonese citizenship to 300,000 persons of Indian origin while 525,000 would be repatriated to India, still leaving 150,000 ‘stateless’. A few weeks later, on December 3, 1964, Thondaman declined to vote on the Press Council Bill, thereby bringing down Mrs. Bandaranaike’s government.
Except for the period between 1970 and 1977 when he was out of Parliament, Thondaman had the knack of picking winners in politics and served as a minister under Presidents J.R. Jayewardene, R. Premadasa and Chandrika Kumaratunga until his demise in 1999.
Thondaman enjoyed the best working relationship with Jayewardene. Both shrewd judges of men and matters, they understood and respected each other. When ‘JR’ requested undated letters of resignation from the government Parliamentary group, Thondaman was the only MP who didn’t oblige. “I am the leader of the CWC, I am not part of the UNP,” Thondaman told JR, who merely said “Alright, Thonda” and left it at that.
It was this kind of understanding that enabled Thondaman, while being in JR’s Cabinet, to decree that the CWC should stage strikes to win better wages - which they did. The rapport between them enabled Thondaman to convince JR to grant citizenship to all those of Indian origin. This was finally concluded after Ranasinghe Premadasa assumed office as President.
Despite this significant achievement, questions remain about plantation workers of Indian origin, almost 200 years after their arrival in the country. While their wages have increased nominally, it is questionable as to whether this has kept pace with the rising cost of living. Even more telling are their living conditions which have improved only marginally.
The leadership of the CWC meanwhile has passed, like a family heirloom, to Thondaman’s grandson Arumugam and, after his sudden death, to his son, Jeevan, now 28 years of age.
Tamils of Indian origin in the country, amounting to well over 1,000,000, may not be second class citizens but for most, their socio-economic conditions remain ‘second class’. The CWC of today, different from what it was during the days of Peri Sundaram and Thondaman, has still miles to go and many promises to fulfil because Sri Lankan citizens of Indian origin haven’t gained their ‘independence’ as yet.
(The writer is the son of Periannan Sunderam Snr. He is an attorney-at-law, former Senior Vice President of the CWC, and ex-Sri Lanka Ambassador to Indonesia and the Philippines)