2019 Statelessness & Citizenship Review B 1(1) After Independence On 4 February 1948, roughly a century after the population that would come to be known as the Up-Country Tamils had emerged in Ceylon, an independent Ceylon came into being. 66 Three years prior in talks between the country’s future Prime Minister Dudley Shelton Senanayake and the British government, it had been agreed that the question of citizenship would be determined by the government of an independent Ceylon, 67 and on 15 November 1948 the Citizenship Act No 18 (‘1948 Act’) was enacted. 68 Although the colonial era Soulbury Constitution had stipulated ‘that no law could be enacted, that was discriminatory to one community, or that is not applicable to other communities’, 69 the 1948 Act targeted exclusively the Up-Country Tamil community insofar as citizenship by descent was automatically granted to the country’s Sinhala, Ceylon Tamil, Ceylon Moor, Burgher and Malay communities while Up-Country Tamils were required to prove descent. 70 Specifically, citizenship by descent would be conferred if one could prove that his or her father, or paternal grandfather and great-grandfather had been born in Ceylon, yet birth registration had only been undertaken as of 1895 meaning that only few persons in Ceylon could provide their father’s birth certificate, let alone that of their grandfather or great-grandfather. 71 Failing this, citizenship by registration could be sought, though the costs involved, coupled with the need for proficiency in English and Sinhala to complete the process, made this a burdensome if not unrealistic option for a largely impoverished and illiterate demographic. 72 In all, approximately 800,000 Up-Country Tamils were denied citizenship under the operation of this Act. 73 Several attempts to resolve the issue of statelessness were pursued in both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and are listed here in chronological order: the Indo–Ceylon Agreement of 1954 (Nehru–Kotelawala Pact); 74 the Indo–Ceylon Agreement of 1964 (Sirima–Shastri Pact); 75 the Indo–Ceylon Agreement of 1974; 76 the Grant of Citizenship to Stateless Persons 1986; 77 and the Grant of Citizenship to Persons of Indian Origin Act of 2003. 78 By 2003, there remained a population of 84,000 persons plus their natural increase, who were legally resident in Sri Lanka but without the rights accrued to a citizen of Sri Lanka. 79 This de facto stateless Up-Country Tamil population prompted Parliament to enact the Grant of Citizenship to Persons of Indian Origin 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 Ishtiaq Ahmed, State, Nation and Ethnicity in Contemporary South Asia (Pinter 1996). Kanapathypillai (n 51). Vijayapalan (n 37). P P Devaraj, ‘From Exclusion to Incorporation: Tangled & Torturous Experiences of the Indian Origin Tamils’ in Gnana Moonesinghe (ed), Challenges for Nation Building: Priorities for Sustainability and Inclusivity (Shramaya 2010) 101. Fries and Bibin (n 48); Lawrence (n 55); Jayarwardena and Kurian (n 47). Jayarwardena and Kurian (n 47). Fries and Bibin (n 47); Vijayapalan (n 37). Vijayapalan (n 37). Indo–Ceylon Agreement (Nehru–Kotelawala Pact), India–Sri Lanka, signed 18 January 1954. Indo–Ceylon Agreement (Sirima–Shastri Pact), India–Sri Lanka, signed 30 October 1964. Indo–Ceylon Agreement, India–Sri Lanka, signed 28 June 1974. Grant of Citizenship to Stateless Persons Act, No 5 of 1986, 21 February 1987 (Sri Lanka). Grant of Citizenship to Persons of Indian Origin Act of 2003, 23 September 2003, Bill No 153 (Sri Lanka). Vijayapalan (n 37). 16