History

In this article, Samriddhi writes about the exodus of Myanmar over many decades. The first wave of expulsions began with more than 15,000 Indians leaving Burma in the early phase, and with the coming of the Japanese invaders, a state-ordered evacuation drive took its force transporting almost a lakh back to India. While the journey by itself was harangued by a conspicuous racial divide between the ‘kalur’ Indian and the British, both escaping foreseeable doom at the hand of the Japanese, graver wounds could be attributed to a skewed administrative mechanism. The lawless clamour led to over two-lakh more walking through a disoriented corridor back to India, with the number of deaths along the Taungup route unascertained to this day. Most immovable property, including houses, businesses, offices, schools, cinema halls, temples, and other zones of social and economic life, were found besieged by the military under what is now known as the most anti-Indian measure of the day– the Enterprises Nationalization Act of 1963

In this article, Debopriya writes about the Indian Indenture system. In 1833, the British Parliament passed the British Abolition of Slavery Act, implying freedom for the hundreds of thousands of British slaves who had been kidnapped and made to work in colonies. By putting the systematic system of slavery to an end, the colonisers were now looking for a new form of labour provision. This, in turn, gave way to the indentured labour system of labour provision, the impact of which can be measured in terms of how this migrant labour system led to changing notions of ethnicity and development of multi-ethnic communities.