CALCUTTA: The Committee of the Indian Chamber of Commerce, Calcutta, has sent a telegraphic communication to the Hon’ble Overseas Member to the Government of India in regard to a news agency report that Sir Baron Jayatilaka, Representative of the Ceylon Government, has represented recently to the Government of India to send 20,000 Indian workers to Ceylon for rubber plantation work.

It states that the Committee is emphatically of the opinion that in view of the continued attempts of the present Ceylon Government to institute anti-Indian measures, both administrative and legislative, to deprive the large number of Indians in Ceylon of their legitimate rights of citizenship and to subject them to various hardships and difficulties of a humiliating nature, it would certainly be not in keeping with the self-respect of Indians and detrimental to their interests in Ceylon to grant such a request.

The Committee, while recognising the importance of the rubber industry for war purposes regrets that there is no appreciation on the part of the Ceylon Government that India’s co-operation could be secured only by ensuring ... fundamental rights of citizenship to Indians in Ceylon. The request for supply of any Indian labourers for Ceylon should be turned down. — Dawn Delhi

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2018