Once again, Tamil Nadu opened its borders and there was strong ground support for the Tamil cause in Sri Lanka. In 1983, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) killed 13 Sri Lankan soldiers, kicking off a bloody civil war and forcing several thousand Tamils to flee to India. By now, according to Valatheeswaran, most of the original refugees have lost the documentation they would need to return to Sri Lanka or become citizens of India, leaving them in a state of limbo. By 1982, the Indian government had voided the pact with only 280,000 refugees having been placed in India successfully. Roughly 500,000 of those individuals chose to come to India, mostly because they or their ancestors had migrated from Tamil Nadu to Sri Lanka during the era of the British Raj.ĭespite a follow up pact being signed in 1974 by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, for decades many of the arrivals remained stateless. The first influx came when Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and Sri Lankan Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike signed an agreement that would allow 800,000 people who had neither Indian nor Sri Lankan citizenship to become citizens of the country of their choice. Refugees largely arrived in India in three waves in 1964, 19 respectively.Īlso read | Five human influxes that have shaped India Irudaya Rajan, the director of IIMD, explained to that due to the strong historic and cultural bond shared by Tamils in both India and Sri Lanka, Tamil refugees have always been welcomed into the state. Sri Lanka is located barely 30 miles off the coast of Tamil Nadu and there has long been cross-strait migration between the Tamil population of the two regions. (Reuters photo) History of Sri Lankan immigration into India People wait to buy kerosene at a Ceylon Petroleum Corporation fuel station, amid the country’s economic crisis in Colombo, Sri Lanka. This new wave of migration is unlikely to ease up anytime soon, explains Dr C Valatheeswaran, a Senior Fellow at the International Institute of Migration and Development (IIMD), adding that while we won’t see refugees arriving in the same numbers as before, more are surely to come.

They are certain to join the approximately 100,000 Sri Lankans living in refugee camps across India or if they’re very lucky, the 34,000 individuals residing outside of the camps.

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