Where TamizhConnect's data comes from

Why it's public

Under the Representation of the People Act 1950 (Section 17) and the Registration of Electors Rules 1960 (Rule 11), electoral rolls are public documents. The ECI publishes them openly and any citizen may inspect or obtain a copy. They are freely downloadable from the ECI website at eci.gov.in and from state CEO websites including ceotn.gov.in (Tamil Nadu).

How TamizhConnect uses it

We have indexed these rolls to make them searchable by name, enabling Tamil diaspora families to locate ancestral family members and trace village origins. We do not sell this data, share it with third parties, or use it for any commercial purpose other than genealogy search.

Why it's public

These are colonial government administrative records more than 100 years old. They are held in national archives and are classified as public domain historical documents. They have been digitised and made available by institutions including:

• Mauritius National Archives (nationalarchives.govmu.org)
• National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago
• National Archives of Guyana
• Fiji National Archives
• UK National Archives (nationalarchives.gov.uk)
• British Library India Office Records
• Nationaal Archief (Netherlands) & Nationaal Archief Curaçao — Suriname & Curaçao slavery and emancipation registers (nationaalarchief.nl)

Many of these records have also been digitised by academic researchers and published in peer-reviewed genealogy databases. They are the same records cited by the British Library, FamilySearch (run by the LDS Church), and university Tamil Studies departments worldwide.

Attribution: the Curaçao slavery & emancipation registers (1839–1863, index nt00462) and the Suriname slavery registers and civil registration (index nt00461) are reproduced from the Nationaal Archief (Netherlands) and Nationaal Archief Curaçao / Suriname under a Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 licence. The VOC (Opvarenden) seafarers' index (nt00444) is provided under a CC0 public-domain dedication. UK passenger-list catalogue data is Crown copyright, reused under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

How TamizhConnect uses it

We have digitised, indexed, and made these records searchable to help Tamil diaspora families in Mauritius, Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana, Fiji, Suriname, South Africa, and other countries trace their ancestors who were transported as indentured labourers. This is one of the only platforms in the world that makes these records searchable in a single place.

Why this matters

For Tamil diaspora families in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean, and Pacific regions, these records are often the only documentation that their ancestors existed. Many families have been searching for these records for generations.

Why it's private

This data belongs to the user who entered it. It is:

• Never shared with any third party
• Never sold
• Never used for advertising
• Accessible only to the user and family members they explicitly invite
• Deletable at any time via Account Settings → Delete Account

Data protection

TamizhConnect complies with the UK GDPR and the Indian Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023. Our privacy policy is at tamizhconnect.com/legal/privacy.