Indian Blood for Tamil Eelam (Before Memory Dies) | Documentry on Malayaka Tamils

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01 Mar 2025

By Nandhana Werarathne | ⁣ 20 Apr 2018

Uploader advise: Be aware that this docuemtry has some "Pirathesa Vaatham" against Jaffna Tamils and the facts given to support this are "Trust Me bro" sources; utterly distorted data!

⁣When we hear the word Sri Lanka, what flashes in front of us is the 30 year long North-East war and the Eelam Tamils. Amidst the Eelam Tamils, there is another segment of people who have participated in the war and are living in the North and the East, which many of us do not know.

In 1823, people were brought down by the British from India to work in the coffee, tea and rubber plantations and were settled in the Hill country. They were granted citizenship in 1831. However in 1948, as soon as the country gained independence, under the Citizenship Act, this community became stateless. Few returned to their motherland and few moved with the native Tamils in the North and the East.
With the 1958 violence, many were attacked. In order to ensure their safety many wanted to settle in the North and the East.

In this background as a solution for the stateless problem of the people, Sri Lankan and the Indian Prime Ministers, Sirima Bandaranayake & Lal Bahathur Saasthri brought and Act to give citizenship for 6 hundred thousand in India & 125000 in Sri Lanka
This Act was introduced in 1970. But some who did not want to return to India wanted to join and resettle with the native Tamils in the North and the East. Following this in the 1977, 1981 and 1983 communal riots, there was a mass exodus of Hill country Tamils to the North and the East.

Those who moved to the North and the East not only regarded it as their motherland but also contributed equally to the Tamil national freedom struggle. They participated till the last stages of the war.
No post-war records showed any of their contributions to the war.
Further in the post war context, no one seems to notice the issues faced by this community. In this background, the ISD as a step to compile the stories of these people collected and recorded the oral histories.

This documentary carries few of these stories. These life struggle stories are just few drops of what happened in the North and the East war which lasted for 30 years. The stories of these people will be preserved in the Plantation Tea Worker Museum.