Footnote to the Grand War: the Silenced Exiles of Burma.

This paper delves into the lives of Burmese Indians-Indian minorities that had migrated to and later settled in Colonial Burma under the policies of the British Colonial government and later repatriated or fled Burma starting late 1930s till 1960s. The stories of Burmese Indians who once formed a sizable minority in Burma is consciously absent from historical records of both India and Burma today. By excavating this lesser known history this paper illustrates how inadequate representation in historical writing, has relegated these stories to the recesses of folk memories and grandparent's tales of immigration. The paper is primarily based on analysis of secondary data which included researched works, autobiographical books, reports and government records of Indian minorities that were living or repatriated from Burma. Additionally it makes use of newspaper reports to support the data provided from books and documents of that time on the conditions of Indians in Burma and their stories of exile. This paper attempts to create multi-layered historical profiles of the Indian minorities in Burmawho they were, why had they migrated to Burma and the sectors that employed them. The paper draws the trajectory of the circumstances under which the mass migration of Indians began, up until the conditions which pushed them out of Burma. It will particularly engage with the mass exodus of Indians from Burma following the Japanese annexation of the state and how Second World War was but one of the factors alongside other like rising anti-India sentiments that propelled Indians to flee Burma. Finally, this paper argues that the eclipsing of the stories of the Burmese Indians from both Indian and the Burmese memory-scape has created an anomalous situation wherein not only is the event of the Burmese Indians' exodus dis-embedded from Burma's larger historical trajectory but the contemporary ethnic violence that is being played out in Burma today especially against the Rohingya Muslims is also de-linked from any reference to the anti-India rhetoric of the past. This double eclipsing has created a façade wherein the Rohingya Muslims exodus is now perceived as a 'one-off' event rather than woven into and read as part of Burma's larger history of ethnic violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]