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SOCIO-LEGAL REVIEW
VOL. 17
Stateless Persons, 1954 (“1954 Convention”), a stateless person is one “who is
not considered as a national by any state under operation of its law.”2
The 2019 Act relaxes the requirements for obtaining Indian citizenship for
refugees fleeing religious persecution.3 However, the scope of the 2019 Act is
narrow and specific, leaving out several notable groups of South Asian refugees. As a result, these excluded groups will be forced to live as stateless individuals in India.4
One category of refugees that the 2019 Act fails to provide for are the Sri
Lankan Tamils, who had fled to India in the wake of the Sri Lankan civil war
and have lived in Indian refugee camps ever since.5 Presently, they cannot
gain citizenship in either Indian or Sri Lanka.6 Although the Tamil Nadu and
Central governments have devised numerous welfare measures for these refugees7, there has been little constructive action towards granting them Indian
2
3
4
5
6
7
pdf_file/0003/3441054/Statelessness-in-India-Briefing-Note.pdf> accessed 28 July 2021;
Anupama Roy, ‘In the name of a majority’ (The Hindu, 13 December 2019) <https://www.
thehindu.com/opinion/lead/in-the-name-of-a-majority/article30289562.ece> accessed 28 July
2021; Anas Tanwir and Sanobar Fatma, ‘New Citizenship Act is illogical and poorly drafted’
(National Herald, 14 December 2019) <https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/opinion/new-actis-illogical-and-poorly-drafted> accessed 28 July 2021.
Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons 1954 (adopted 28 September 1954,
entered into force 6 June 1960), art 1 (“1954 Convention”); Convention on the Reduction of
Statelessness 1961 (adopted 30 August 1961, entered into force 13 December 1975) (“1961
Convention”); in popular culture, the film ‘The Terminal’ depicts statelessness based on a
real-life story of an Iranian-born refugee rendered stateless forced to live in the Charles de
Gaulle International Airport in Paris for sixteen years as in Paul Berczeller ‘The man who
lost his past’ (The Guardian, 6 September 2004) <https://www.theguardian.com/film/2004/
sep/06/features.features11> accessed 28 July 2021.
2019 Act, s 2, s 6.
“Refugee” and “stateless person” are conceptually and legally different categories; however,
under Indian law, these two groups experience no differentiation. Further, most Sri Lankan
Tamil refugees in India are also stateless.
BS Chimni, ‘The Legal Condition of Refugees in India’ (1994) 7 Journal of Refugee Studies
378; Nasreen Chowdhory, ‘The Idea of “Belonging” and Citizenship Among Refugees: Some
Theoretical Considerations’ in Nasreen Chowdhory (ed), Refugees, Citizenship and Belonging
in South Asia: Contested Terrains (Springer 2018); Rina Chandran, ‘Missing from India’s
Citizenship Law: 100,000 Sri Lankan Refugees’ (Reuters, 3 December 2019) <https://www.
reuters.com/article/us-india-refugees-protests-trfn-idUSKBN1YS0VA> accessed 28 July 2021.
Sen (n 1); Rebecca Wolozin, ‘Citizenship Issues and Issuing Citizenship: A Case Study of
Sri Lanka’s Citizenship Laws in a Global Context’ (2009) 16 Asian-Pacific Law and Policy
Journal 1; Rajesh Venugopal, Nationalism, Development and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka
(Cambridge University Press 2018); Nithyani Anandakugan, ‘The Sri Lankan Civil War and
its History, Revisited in 2020’ (Harvard International Review, 31 August 2020) <https://hir.
harvard.edu/sri-lankan-civil-war/#:~:text=The%20war%20was%20mainly%20a,state%20
for%20the%20Tamil%20minority> accessed 28 July 2021.
Manohar Velamati, ‘Sri Lankan Tamil Migration and Settlement: Time for Reconsideration’
(2009) 65 India Quarterly 271; BS Chimni, ‘Meaning of Words and the Role of UNHCR in
Voluntary Repatriation’ [1993] 5 International Journal of Refugee Law 442.