Miscellaneous - This Day That Age   

dated July 27, 1952: Indian Rights In Ceylon

Mr. C. Suntheralingam (Independent), asked the Prime Minister of Ceylon to make public the proceedings of the 1939 talks between Jawaharlal Nehru and the late Prime Minister D.S. Senanayake on the Indian question. In his reply, Mr. Dudley Senanayake, said in the House of Representatives on July 25 that no tentative agreement on the employment and citizenship rights of Indian settlers in Ceylon had been reached between India and Ceylon as a result of Nehru's visit to Ceylon in 1939.

Mr. R.G. Senanayake, Commerce Minister, asked the member whether there had been any signatories to the said agreement. Mr. Suntheralingam said the agreement had not been signed by either Government, but yet for all that, it was a tentative agreement (Ministerial laughter).

Mr. Suntheralingam said that in 1939 when the Board of Ministers of State Council was functioning, the turmoil caused by the Indian problem in Ceylon reached such serious proportions that ultimately Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru himself had to come to Ceylon to negotiate terms with the Board of Ministers.

The Ceylon Government's action in ordering repatriation of Indian labour was discussed and it was then pointed out that no discrimination of a political nature had been intended by the order which was merely designed to give employment to numerous unemployed Ceylonese.

Mr. Suntheralingam said the reciprocal rights had been guaranteed by the Indian Government to Ceylon nationals who wished to live in India or establish trade etc. Not a single unskilled Indian labourer was allowed to enter Ceylon. But during the Second World War, in 1943, the Ceylon Government invited the skilled labour from India to help production of rubber and serve the war effort.

Indian art show in Tokyo

Prince Takamatsu, younger brother of the Emperor of Japan, his wife, Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, Foreign Minister Katsoo Okayaki attended on July 24, a preview of the Indian art exhibition being held in Tokyo, by the Indian Embassy

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