What is known as the Indo-Ceylon problem first became acute in March 1939, when I suggested that all daily-paid non-Ceylonese workers in Government departments should be repatriated to the country of their birth with a gratuity and their fares paid; and that stringent regulations should be enforced to prevent their return to Ceylon for employment here.

Indians in Ceylon described this scheme as "monstrous." My only object was to give Ceylonese workers an opportunity of doing what non-Ceylonese were then doing, and to help to solve the problem of unemployment in Ceylon. At that time there were about six thousand non-Ceylonese daily-paid workers in Government departments.

Some months later Nehru, who was then fighting against the British Raj in India, came to Ceylon to discuss with the Board of Ministers the Government order for the retirement of non-Ceylonese daily-paid workers. He had been sent by the All-India Congress Working Committee for this purpose. During the talks we had with him I justified the action which I had initiated, and rebutted the charge that this was a movement of unfair discrimination against Indians in Ceylon.

I told him that the problem of unemployment among Ceylonese was becoming so serious that it was even feared that the Government might soon have to pay doles unless other methods of relieving the situation could be found. I impressed on him that the men who were being sent away had been told that, in view of the increasing financial stringency, retrenchment of daily-paid jobs within the next year or two was inevitable, and that the policy of discontinuing non-Ceylonese before Ceylonese would have then to be adopted.

Meeting the general charges of anti-Indian feeling brought against the people of Ceylon on public platforms and in the Indian Press, I referred to Indian money-lenders who duped illiterate debtors; to Indian shops in Colombo with 100 percent. Indian staffs; and to professional politicians from India who attempted to engineer strikes among ignorant Indians. I also mentioned that Indian members of the State Council often voted against Ceylonese interests, violating the fundamental principles of the Indian National Congress.

Much misunderstanding in India and mischievous misrepresentation by Indians in Ceylon aggravated the IndoCeylon problem, and fruitless discussions continued for many years with increasing bitterness on both sides.

Towards the end of 194o I described this question as a matter of life and death for the Ceylonese. I said that if Indians swamped us it would destroy our identity as nationals of Ceylon. All we wanted was to have the same rights that other countries enjoyed�namely, to decide who the citizens of our country should be. We had the misfortune of seeing most of our lands taken over by foreign capitalists for the sake of making money at our expense. Without our consent they imported Indian labourers.

My contention was that it was impossible to make 900,000 Indians citizens of Ceylon without the risk of reducing our own people to beggary and losing our identity as Ceylonese. It was at this time that I accused the Leader of the State Council, Sir Baron Jayatillaka, of being inclined to follow the policy of appeasement as far as the Indians in Ceylon were concerned.

On the other hand, the British official who was the head of the Treasury in Ceylon at the time, H. J. Huxham, supported my proposal to repatriate the Indian workmen in our Government departments. I suggested that the attitudes of Sir Baron and Huxham contrasted sharply. While Huxham seemed to be wearing Anthony Eden's hat, Sir Baron was carrying Neville Chamberlain's umbrella. (We had not forgotten Munich.) This annoyed Sir Baron a lot. But the Board of Ministers approved of my proposals. The Indians had to go.

It took fourteen years for anything like a satisfactory agreement to be reached between India and Ceylon on outstanding issues. When I became Prime Minister I was determined to succeed where my predecessors had failed. The result was what came to be known as the Nehru-Kotelawala Pact. This was not a final settlement, but marked the beginning of a definite advance towards that end. Unfortunately, the Pact was not implemented satisfactorily.

When it seemed to be completely derailed I arranged for another meeting with Nehru. This time I included in the Ceylon delegation the former Prime Minister, Dudley Senanayake, who was one of the most outspoken critics of the Pact, and the Leader of the Opposition, S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike. When we reached Bombay early in October 1954 I said that I had come to settle the Indo-Ceylon problem once and for all, and clear the air for all time.

After considerable discussion, during which a deadlock was threatened more than once, we arrived at a compromise which satisfied both parties. The Nehru-Kotelawala Pact was put back on the track again. But we did not solve the fundamental problem of `stateless' persons who would not qualify for Ceylon citizenship. Nehru refused to accept the principle of such persons being recognized as Indian nationals.

Anyway, we had taken the matter a step further towards a final solution. We now knew exactly where we stood. And we had cleared the ground for future action. The position would be reviewed two years hence.

As the future of Indians in Ceylon seems to me a matter that should interest all countries in Asia and elsewhere with difficult problems of citizenship to solve, I think it is necessary that all the relevant facts and developments should be put on record dispassionately for the guidance of world opinion.

The Indo-Ceylon problem is largely a legacy of the old colonialism. It started with the opening of plantations or estates in the territory of the former Kandyan Kings by British capitalists some 125 years ago. The local population, which was Sinhalese by race and language and Buddhist by religion, occupied and owned the paddy lands in the valleys of this territory, while it used the hills, which were covered with jungle or patna,1 for the pasturing of cattle, the collection of firewood and timber, and the cultivation of chenas . The British treated these unoccupied hills as Crown lands, and disposed of them at nominal rates to capitalists who were prepared to cultivate coffee and�after the failure of coffee�tea and rubber.

Labour was imported from South India and housed on the estates. It was imported by foreign capitalists, with the assistance of the foreign Government then in power. It was accorded special privileges, some of them by statute, and Indian labourers were given facilities of travelling up and down between Ceylon and their homes in India. In course of time the Sinhalese population in the Kandyan villages multiplied without having room for expansion, for it was penned into its narrow valleys by the estates.

Thus one finds to-day in the valleys, cultivating their ancestral lands, the Kandyans, who observe their ancient traditions, while on the hill-sides between those valleys is a migrant population of South Indian wage-earners, who observe the social traditions of South India. These two sections of the population do not mix, for they are different in religion, language, social tradition, and occupation. In most countries a migrant population can be absorbed into the indigenous population in one generation. In Ceylon it is still `Indian' after three generations.

The term 'migrant' is, however, used in three senses. In the first place, the population has been imported within the last hundred years. In the second place, a large part of that population is still domiciled in South India. Many of the families in Ceylon maintain contact with their relatives in India and visit their ancestral villages every year. Even families which have been long resident in Ceylon maintain contact with India, so that, for instance, the young men marry wives from within the appropriate social groups in India. In the third place, the population is migrant in that it is not attached to the soil but moves about from estate to estate as employment offers. For this reason even the identification of an Indian migrant is often a matter of considerable difficulty.

Within the same province, the same district, and even the same village area there are thus two distinct communities, unable to speak each other's language, having no social or economic relations with each other, and having in fact nothing in common save geographical propinquity. This is the picture so far as the Indian population resident on the estates is concerned. This population constitutes by far the largest proportion of the Indian population in Ceylon, but outside the estate areas, and more especially in the towns, there is a not inconsiderable section of Indians who are just as migrant as the others, and whose presence is of not less significance to economic conditions where Ceylon's own nationals are concerned.

Coming now to the political developments, under the Donoughmore Constitution of 1931 about half the adults among the Indian population of Ceylon had votes as "British subjects." In order that discussions over the franchise might not delay the attainment of independence, the first elections under the Constitution of 1946 were held on the 1931 franchise, but power was given to the new Parliament to regulate the matter.

The elections showed how close were the communal ties among the Indians. Where they had a majority they elected a member of their communal organization, and thereby virtually disfranchised the Kandyans in seven constituencies. Where they were not in a majority they obeyed the instructions of their communal organization to vote for a particular Ceylonese candidate.

It is believed that in thirteen or fourteen constituencies they secured by these means the election of a candidate who had only minority support among the Ceylonese voters. Thus a communal organization exclusively representing Indians affected the result in one-fifth of all the constituencies of Ceylon then in existence, and communal segregation of Kandyans and Indians had led to a very difficult and serious problem in the Kandyan provinces.

When the Indian problem was under discussion between 1928 and 1947 it was thought of almost entirely as a problem of the franchise, since all the Ceylonese and nearly all the Indians were "British subjects"; indeed, the definition of "British subjects" was made wider in Ceylon in order to include the subjects of Indian States who were not "British subjects" in undivided India.

In 1941 an agreement was reached between delegations representing the Government of India and Ceylon, but that agreement was not ratified by the Government of India.

In 1948 the new Government of Ceylon made further concessions to the new Government of India, but still an agreement could not be reached, although there was the fullest consultation between the two Governments. The legislation enacted in 1948 and 1949 �viz, The Citizenship Act No. 18, of 1948, and the Indian and Pakistan Residents (Citizenship) Act No. 3, of 1949 --represented the utmost concession that the Government of Ceylon was willing to make. That concession went far beyond the views of many supporters of the Government, especially in the Kandyan provinces.

The long-drawn-out "Indian question" was thought to be settled at last by the enactment of the Indian and Pakistani Residents (Citizenship) Act, No. 3, of 1949, as a result of the talks and consultations which D. S. Senanayake had with the Prime Minister of India. The subject that had been under discussion was that of citizenship in Ceylon for Indian residents, and the new Act prescribed the conditions that must be satisfied before an Indian (or Pakistani) resident could be registered as a Ceylon citizen. Indian residents would thus be divided into those who acquired Ceylon citizenship and those who did not.

This was clearly the most reasonable settlement that could have been expected of the host country, and in respect of those who did not acquire Ceylon citizenship D. S. Senanayake went on to say they would "still continue to be allowed to remain in the island as Indian citizens, and to pursue their lawful avocations without interference." This statement of Senanayake's is also related to the introductory statement that the Prime Minister of India had made at the beginning of his talks with Senanayake that, "so far as India was concerned, if all Indians in Ceylon wished to retain their Indian nationality, they were welcome to do so."

It is not out of place to mention here that Indian residents constitute one-eighth of the total population of Ceylon--a proportion of much significance, both politically and economically.

But there was apparently no desire on the part of India to leave well alone. The Indian Government seemed to want to account for the last Indian in Ceylon on an arithmetical basis, and in April 1953 they returned to the charge again. This time they took up the question of the balance of Indian residents that would be left after registration of Indians as Ceylon citizens, and they were ably represented by the astute High Commissioner in Ceylon, C. C. Desai. And, as usual, behind Desai was the Ceylon Democratic Congress, which had only recently changed its name from Ceylon Indian Congress. It was an amusing irony, from the Ceylon point of view, that the two leading lights of this body, the President and his coadjutor, had since become Ceylon citizens but were the most ardent protagonists of the Indian cause.

The renewed negotiations between the two Governments took place in Ceylon between Desai and Dudley Senanayake and were continued in London in June 195 3, between Nehru and Senanayake, both of whom had gone there for the Queen's coronation. The following points constituted the basis of the discussions between the two Prime Ministers:

(a) Four hundred thousand Indians now resident in Ceylon were expected to be registered as Ceylon citizens. This figure was not a guaranteed figure but an estimate, the actual figure depending on the results of the impartial administration of the Citizenship Act;

(b) The number of citizens registered under the Act plus the number of persons granted Permanent Residence Permits should be 65o,000. This was not to be a minimum figure but a maximum;

(c) Persons granted Permanent Residence Permits would have their future status determined at the end of ten years, during which period if any of them desired to go back to India and take up citizenship of that country the Government of India was not to object to their proposal;

(d) The balance of Indian residents in Ceylon, approximately 300,000 or more, were to be accepted as Indian citizens by the Government of India, and to be compulsorily repatriated, the operation being phased over a definite period of years;

(e) All these steps were to be a part of a single scheme of settlement of the Indo-Ceylon problem. There was to be no question of settling any one point without at the same time coming to an arrangement with regard to the others.

The discussions between Nehru and Dudley Senanayake ended in failure. Nehru found himself unable to agree to any form of compulsory repatriation of Indian residents, and he also desired that the total number of citizens registered under the Indian and Pakistani Residents (Citizenship) Act, plus the number of persons granted Permanent Residence Permits, should he increased to 700,000 (out of a total of some 980,000 Indian nationals resident in Ceylon). It was therefore agreed between the two Prime Ministers that for the time being matters might be left where they were.

When my turn to try my hand at the Indo-Ceylon question came I was between two fires. There was Desai on the one hand thinking of the problem in numerical terms, and on the other the leaders of the Kandyans, fearful for the rights of their people, and jealously watchful lest they be reduced by one jot or tittle.

Desai had got it firmly into his head that 400,000 out of the 980,000 Indian nationals resident in Ceylon could and should be made Ceylon citizens. Nothing would convince him that this was only the maximum figure of an estimate, and that the figure could as well be 100,000 as 400,000, and that even that estimate no longer held good, because it had dropped out of the framework within which it had been originally made.

Nearly every Indian had applied for citizenship, whether he had the qualifications or not, and whether he was interested in being a Ceylon citizen or not, and the vast majority of the applicants had entered their applications at the last moment, and mainly at the behest of the Ceylon Indian Congress, which had originally boycotted the operation of the Citizenship Act. It was therefore evident that many of the applications must fail, but right through the discussions between the two Governments the figure of 400,000 kept colouring Desai's vision.

The curious part of all this arithmetical bargaining was that no freedom of choice was being left to the individual Indian himself by his Government as to what he would like to be. Ceylon had given him the opportunity of deciding whether he would like to apply to be a Ceylon citizen, but India apparently wanted him willy-nilly to stay back in Ceylon.

Shortly before my departure for India a Kandyan interested in this subject brought to everybody's attention the interesting fact that there was provision in the new Constitution of India for Indians resident abroad to register themselves as Indian citizens with their consular representative in the country where they happened to be. This had a very material bearing from our point of view on the problem that was awaiting solution. What had Desai to say about it? At first he expressed the opinion that the facilities offered by the Indian law had become time-expired, but later he agreed that time could not affect a right conferred on the individual by his country's Constitution.

A strong ray of hope now began to shine on the bleak scene of our discussions, and we felt we could at last, when we went to Delhi, propose something which would be equally acceptable to India as to Ceylon. The trouble with the Indo-Ceylon question had always been that the disease was on Ceylon's chest, so to speak, and India need do nothing to help the patient. The Indians were with us, and could be securely left with us by India's merely refusing to allow them re-entry to their homeland.

Our thoughts were now more or less clear. There was first the problem of illicit immigration, of Indians stealing into the country from across the narrow Palk Strait. The problem had been latterly assuming serious proportions, but we knew we were assured of India's help in dealing with it.

Citizenship was a different matter. Nehru had in 1947 declared that "if all Indians in Ceylon wished to retain their Indian nationality, they were free to do so," and D. S. Senanayake had said soon after that Indians who did not choose Ceylon citizenship, or were not admitted to it, would still be allowed to remain in employment in the island as Indian citizens.

The picture had changed since, and India had enacted her Constitution, which contained special provisions dealing with the status, vis-a-vis their country, of Indians residing abroad. It was now clear that there were going to be three classes of Indians in Ceylon�those who would become Ceylon citizens, those who might be admitted as Indian citizens, and a nondescript class whom India would call "stateless" but whose " statelessness " Ceylon would not admit or accept responsibility for.

The first task, in the light of the new developments, was clearly to arrive at some scheme which would enable the first two classes to be sorted out from the third. And it was to be hoped that India would assist in seeing that as few as possible of her nationals became "stateless," especially considering that the provisions she had introduced in her Constitution were�as a natural consequence of bringing about uniformity, no doubt�contrary to the declarations made earlier.

I was accompanied on my journey to India by two of my Ministers, M. D. Banda, Minister of Education (also in his role as a Kandyan Sinhalese), and E. B. Wickramanayake, Minister of Justice. Sir Oliver Goonetilleke, Finance Minister (he is now Governor-General), joined me in Delhi, travelling from Sydney, where he had been attending the Commonwealth financial talks. I was glad to avail myself of his widely known skill as a negotiator and diplomat.

I also took with me, in addition to my official advisers, two unofficial advisers, Senator Sir Ukwatte Jayasundere, Q.C. and D. B. Ellepola, another Kandyan and a man of much experience of Kandyan affairs.

We went first to Karachi, where I had been invited to `drop in on our way' by Mohammed Ali. We had a magnificent reception there, and we enjoyed ourselves for two days in Pakistan without inhibition and without a qualm. We had no problem to settle with Pakistan.

We arrived in Delhi on January 15, and were warmly received at the airport by the Indian Prime Minister and the diplomatic and official elite of Delhi. We had five days to stay, and three days of discussions at the Indian capital, and the hospitality we were treated to was a thing to be remembered.

The weather was crisp and cold, and New Delhi sparkled like a jewel in the January air. We stayed as the guests of the President of India at Rashtrapati Bhawan, its splendours undiminished from old viceregal days, although perhaps less formality haunted its marbled corridors.

The discussions proved heavy going, but I had private talks with Nehru, with whom I rode out of a morning. Desai too was anxious to avert a breakdown, and although breaking-point was reached, both sides finally agreed upon the following proposals:

Illicit Immigration

1. Both Governments are determined to suppress illicit immigration traffic between the two countries and will take all possible steps, in close co-operation with each other, towards that end. Periodical meetings between high Police authorities on either side of the Palk Strait may be held, and information relating to illicit immigration exchanged.

2. The Government of Ceylon propose to undertake the preparation of a register of all adult residents who are not already on the electoral register, and will maintain such registers up to date. When this registration is completed, any person not so registered will, if his mother tongue is an Indian language, be presumed to be an illicit immigrant from India and liable to deportation and the Indian High Commissioner will extend all facilities for implementation of such deportation.

3. The Government of Ceylon may proceed with the Immigrants and Emigrants Amendment Bill which throws on the accused the onus of proof that he is not an illicit immigrant; but before any person is prosecuted in accordance with this provision, the Government of Ceylon will give an opportunity to the Indian High Commissioner to satisfy himself that a prima facie case exists for such prosecution, the final decision being that of the Government of Ceylon.

Citizenship

4. The registration of citizens under the Indians and Pakistani

(Citizenship) Act will be expedited and every endeavour will be made to complete the disposal of pending applications within two years.

5. All persons registered under this Act may be placed by the Government of Ceylon on a separate electoral register, particularly in view of the fact that the bulk of the citizens do not speak the language of the area in which they reside. This arrangement will last for a period of only ten years. The Government of Ceylon agree that in certain constituencies where the number of registered citizen voters is not likely to exceed 250, they shall be put on the national register.

6. Citizens whose names are placed in the separate electoral register will be entitled to elect a certain number of members to the House of Representatives, the number being determined after consultation with the Prime Minister of India. The Government of Ceylon expect to complete their action in this respect before the present Parliament is dissolved in 1957.

7. In regard to those persons who are not so registered, it would be open to them to register themselves as Indian citizens, if they so choose, at the office of the Indian High Commissioner in accordance with the provisions of Article 8 of the Constitution of India. It is noted that Ceylon proposes to offer special inducements to encourage such registration and that these inducements will be announced from time to time. The Government of India will offer administrative and similar facilities to all persons of Indian origin to register themselves as Indian citizens under the Constitution of India, if they so choose, and will also give publicity to the availability of such facilities.

8. Both Prime Ministers are desirous of continuing the present practice of close consultation between the two Governments in matters affecting their mutual interests.

The ink of ratification on the joint proposals was scarcely dry when trouble started again. It had always been difficult to drive suspicion out of Desai's mind, and, although scarcely an Indian was being registered on his side as an Indian citizen, he once again began to complain that we were wilfully chary of registering Indians as Ceylon citizens. He also suddenly took the stand that an Indian who had applied for Ceylon citizenship could not change his mind and apply for Indian citizenship, and this of course meant that very nearly the whole of the Indian population was thrown on our hands.

He also took certain steps which savoured of force majeure. He desisted from issuing travel papers for India to Indians, unless they were either definitely Indian citizens or definitely Ceylon citizens, and, last of all, he began to raise fanciful objections when we were about to amend the Constitution to make the special provision agreed upon for the representation of Indians who had been given citizenship under the Indian and Pakistani Residents (Citizenship) Act.

Desai overplayed his hand. Great feeling was aroused in the country, and also in Parliament, over the impasse that was created, and another visit had to be arranged to Delhi, the object of which was to clear up with the Indian Government the differences that had arisen in Colombo between their High Commissioner and the Ceylon Government.

The visit took place in October 1954. The team that went with me on this occasion was a fully representative one, so that whatever decisions were agreed to at Delhi would, from a parliamentary point of view, be decisions assented to by all parties and interests. S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, Leader of the Opposition, who had also participated in Indo-Ceylon discussions in the Donoughmore days, went with me, and the team included Dudley Senanayake, during whose days as Prime Minister much of the later negotiations between the two Governments had taken place.

The outcome of the October talks was published in a joint statement dated October 10, 1954. This statement spotlighted the new and fundamental difference that had arisen between the two Governments, but left it unsettled. Ceylon recognized no ' stateless ' Indians, and India would now recognize as her own only Indians who held Indian passports and Indians who had obtained Indian nationality under the terms of her Constitution.

It was, however, agreed that the two processes of citizenship registration would be speeded up, so that the position might be reviewed at the end of two years. Ceylon said she would encourage registration as Indian citizens by permitting persons so registered to remain undisturbed in their employment until the age of fifty-five, and she reiterated that she had in mind a scheme of financial inducements too. India once again undertook to give every opportunity and every facility to Indians to register themselves as Indian citizens.

We came back from Delhi as wise as before, but sadder. It is difficult to play a game when the advantage of the wicket is with the other side. Soon after my return from Delhi Desai left Ceylon on transfer to Karachi. But fresh difficulties have arisen over the Indo-Ceylon question. They need not be recounted here, as they have not become history, and are in course of being tackled.

When what came to be known as the Nehru-Kotelawala Pact was signed in January 1954 at New Delhi it was welcomed as a great stride towards a fair and honourable settlement of Indo-Ceylon issues. Both sides had made concessions, and each party had gained thereby. We felt that it was an agreement based on justice, both to the permanent population of Ceylon and to settlers of Indian origin.

I was congratulated on what was considered my greatest achievement since I became Prime Minister. But I had to warn myself against over-optimism, and my caution was justified by subsequent difficulties in the implementing of the Pact to the satisfaction of both Governments. Anyway, I still believe that Nehru and I laid the foundation for a final and friendly settlement.

1. Patna is thick grass land on the mountain top. Chena is land that is cultivated periodically