Spokespersons of the BJP want everyone to believe that the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019 is not discriminatory and those agitating against it are rebels without a cause. It not only discriminates against Muslims of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, but against all communities of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka, including Hindus who constitute vast majority of the refugees in Tamil Nadu. The BJP was not able to win a single seat in the Lok Sabha from Tamil Nadu or in the State Assembly.

That could not be held against the refugee population who do not have voting right anyway. More than 1.5 Hindus from the Eelam districts in Sri Lanka were killed in the three-decade-old (1983-2009) civil war in the island nation pursuing a Sinhala majoritarian rule. Nearly three lakh Eelam Tamils fled Sri Lanka and took refuge in Tamil Nadu during the civil war period.

Although a majority of them left for their homeland since the civil war ended in 2009 or migrated to other countries, about 95,000 are still left in Tamil Nadu. The ruling AIADMK by voting for the CAA in Parliament has betrayed the interest of these refugees who live in utter fear of ending up in detention camps. Twenty-eight-year-old T Yanadhan, born in Salem district of Tamil Nadu to Eelam Tamil refugee parents, approached the district collector a fortnight ago and expressed his fear that the CAA killed his dream of getting Indian citizenship and that he would be better off dead than alive.

The 1955 Citizenship Act did not include religion as a criterion for granting Indian citizenship. The CAA excludes the 95,000-odd Sri Lankan Tamil refugees, the majority of them Hindus, from applying for Indian citizenship. They fear the same plight as the 18,000 Rohingya Muslims living in camps across India after fleeing religious persecution in Myanmar. They dare not speak out against this unfair CAA for fear of violent backlash. Justifying the exclusion of Eelam Tamils from the CAA, L Ganesan, BJP leader in Tamil Nadu, said their return to Sri Lanka would be the best solution as their votes in the island nation would matter very much for the welfare of the Tamils there.

Claiming the BJP did not have any hidden agenda in this matter, Ganesan said he was not against granting Indian citizenship to Eelam Tamils. Of the million Tamils of Indian origin in Sri Lanka, as opposed to the Eelam Tamils who live in the Northern and Eastern Provinces of the island nation, who were deprived of their citizenship and rendered stateless by Colombo, New Delhi had given citizenship to 4.61 lakh and repatriated them to India and settled most of them in Tamil Nadu between 1964 and 2008.