Introduction

Please note that the word “succeeded” is used in an ironical sense. It must not be forgotten that although some writers maintained that the agreement was a success in bilateral relations and it was lauded in certain political circles, in reality it meant the pain of uprootedness for hundreds of persons.

Repatriation became a real and menacing finality when an agreement was signed in 1964 and was accepted by the parties concerned both in Sri Lanka and in India. The investigation in this chapter is whether this agreement became a reality because of India's compliance underlined by her foreign policy requirements, or whether it was also a result and an indication of the abandonment of pluralist democracy in favor of majoritarian tendencies that prevailed in the socio-political trajectory of this time. This potentially divisive and destructive tendency was not only to engulf the major Sinhala-dominated political parties, but was also to draw in the left-wing parties. Therefore, did this process of political mobilization have ideological and moral implications and impact upon the ways in which the Indian Tamil issue was publicly debated? The 1964 agreement was not only about the entrenchment of Sinhala nationalist tendencies in politics, but also about the abandonment and betrayal by different parties and interest groups that had supported the aspirations and sentiments of the Indian Tamils.