Tamil migration abroad was the largest regional component of
Indian emigration during the colonial era. More
than 1.5 million ethnic Tamils from south India were enumerated in
1931 in other (mainly British) colonies where
they had poured in during the previous one hundred years. A
typical feature of Tamil emigration was the ‘kangani’
system in which labour recruitment from India and supervision on the
plantations were in the hands of Tamil
headmen.
Tamil workers were sent mainly to the newly developed plantations,
but they were also active in the urban
economy. Ceylon, Malaya and Burma were tire main recipient countries
of Tamil labour. Other colonies (including
French ones) received only several thousands of workers. After
independence former colonies with strong local
pressure groups tried and got rid of what they saw as disturbing
legacy of the British period.
In this paper an attempt is made to interpret migration processes in
terms of migratory cycle. The cycle of
migration streams is divided into three phases: perfect regulation,
growing independence, government-controlled
termination. These stages of the cycle correspond to the progressive
constitution of a permanent migrant community
in receiving countries. Such a pattern can help analyse other
examples of international labour migration
in the contemporary situation.
Introduction
International labour transfers are
often considered a recent phenomenon,
typical of modern capitalist economies,
distinct from earlier waves of population
movement converging particularly on the
Americas. Yet there has been a long
history of labour migrations in Asia and
numerous examples occurred involving
Chinese or Indian populations from the
19th century onwards. The aim of this
paper is in fact to retrace the history of
the migrations which affected an area of
south India whose inhabitants scattered
all around the Indian Ocean. This region,
Tamil Nadu,1 did not wait for the
population exchanges of recent development
to enlarge its migration field: under
the aegis of the British colonial rule,
overseas emigration became very widespread
from the middle of the last century
onwards; and the international exodus
from this area was probably both
more intensive and more long-lasting than
from any other part of the Indian subcontinent.
Although the political linking
of a disparate collection of countries
under the colonial system did not completely abolish the historical
and geographical distances which separated the various colonies, it
did reduce them considerably and thus created favourable conditions
for large-scale redistributions of population. Among the available
resources. Tamil labour was the first to be exported, and it is
worth emphasising that the internationalisation of this aspect of
the demographic regime started even shortly before complete
integration of the regional economy into the world-system, which
dates rather from the introduction of export-oriented agriculture
and the end of the last century.2
Migrations and Colonial Era
In statistical terms, little is known about
migration in pre-colonial India; but the
geographical distribution of various communities
such as linguistic groups or subcastes
gives a good indication of the scale of ‘permanent migration within the Indian
sub-continent. As far as the Thmil area is
concerned, the sociological composition
of the population from the last century
onward gives a picture of a strong influx
of immigrants, with a significant implantation
of Telugu populations from Andhra
Pradesh, as well as smaller communities
originating in Kerala, Maharashtra and
even distant Gujarat. Inversely, dispersion
of the Tamil population outside its historic
region was very insignificant, except in
border areas such as Kerala. The sole exception to this rule was
the Tamil colonisation
of the north and east of the island
of Sri Lanka, which took place long
before the first European incursions into
the Indian Ocean (see table). Tamil communities
elsewhere, such as the merchants
from the Coromandel coast whom the Portuguese encountered in Malacca
in the 16th century, or slaves exported to southeast Asia, hardly
constitute significant examples of Tamil emigration.3
The establishment of British control
over the Indian sub-continent by the
beginning of the 19th century gave an extraordinary
stimulation and redirection to
the exchange networks, and cheap labour
was one of the first raw materials to be
exported from India by the British. The
British colonial area provided the privileged
framework for this movement. linking
India to other colonies in the Indian
Ocean, but also to other more distant
lands (Melanesia, the Caribbean) and to
other European colonics. During the early
decades of the 19th century, while Great
Britain was establishing its supremacy in
international exchanges, slavery was being
progressively limited in the empire, until
finally in 1843 all slaves were freed. The
lack of the slave labour which the British
had installed on the tropical plantations
(producing sugar, coffee, to bananas,
tea, . . .) quickly made itself felt, and international migrations of free labourers
replaced the recruitment of slaves. Countries
whose economy had depended on the
continuous importation of slaves found
other sources of labour supply within a
few decades.4 South India, because of its
favourable geographic position and the
importance of its colonial ports, was to
take on a very special significance within
this new system.
In Sri Lanka, the first immigrants arrived
towards the end of the 1820s, and
their numbers increased in the course of
the following decade. Considered as ‘indentured
labour’ (labourers bound by a
contract which it was almost impossible
for them to withdraw from), these immigrants
were subject to a quasi-military
regimentation, which was later replaced
by the ‘kangani’ system, a more flexible
arrangement.
Recruitment for Malaya
began at almost the same time, dating
from the 1830s. Migrations to Mauritius
started equally early and very quickly
drained off several thousands (as well as immigrants from Bombay). During
the two subsequent decades the streams
of migration spread to the French Mascareignes
(after the abolition of slavery in
the French colonies in 1848). and to the
colony of Natal in South Africa, where
however most Indians originated from the
Bombay presidency. There was less Tamil
participation in emigration to the Antilles
and Fiji; but the French, who controlled
trading ports in the Tamil area (Pondicherry
and Karaikal) consequently imported
a number of Tamils to Martinique,
Guadeloupe and Reunion.5
Almost all of
these migrations were controlled by
numerous limiting regulations, but the
Indian government gradually yielded to
the pressure of demand from planters in
other colonies and liberalised the process
of migration. From the time of the first
census in 1871 most of these migratory
flows became of marginal importance to
the Tamil population, apart from those to
Sri Lanka and to the Malacca Straits colonies
(the Malaysian peninsula and Singapore).
Later movements to Burma (Myanmar)
followed the progress of colonial
conquest into the Burmese hinterland and
the consequent penetration of capitalism.
The latest target of emigration was doubtless
Fiji in the period before the first world
war.6 The table summarises estimates of
the Tamil population at the different census
dates from 1871 to 1981 in these three
former crown colonies, which garnered
the immense majority of Tamil immigrants.
Also included are more recent
figures, from 1981, in order to give an idea
of how the communities, which developed
as a result of immigration went on evolving
long after the mass migrations had
come to an end.
The Table brings together various census
statistics pertaining to Tamil expatriates;
indigenous communities, such as the
Tamils of northern Ceylon, are naturally
not included in them. The last line of the
table summarises the development of the
emigrant population during the second
half of the colonial period. Its demographic
weight was already significant in
1871, the date of the first censuses taken
in the colonies; at that time the emigrant
population represented 1.5 per cent of that
of the Tamil territory in India-about two
years of regional demographic growth in
the average conditions of the period.
In
the course of the last century, the size of
the overseas Tamil population fluctuated
as a direct function of migratory movements;
the immigrant populations were
not settled, with many individuals returning
regularly to their own country to be
replaced by new arrivals, and the sex
distribution was very imbalanced. But the
Tamil population did gradually settle
overseas and a true diaspora developed.
Families formed, and there was an ever increasing
proportion of women among
the migrants.
The internal growth of the
emigrant population then became significant,
and the percentage of individuals
born in the Madras Presidency decreased
rapidly in favour of a 'second generation'
made of locally-born Tamils; after the second
world war, immigrants as such constituted
less than half of the ethnically
Tamil population, the remainder having
been born locally. From this time on,
migratory exchanges diminished greatly,
with the exception of movements of
populations expelled from Sri Lanka and
Burma. In 1981 the population of the
Tamil diaspora could be estimated at 4.3
per cent of the population of Tamil Nadu,
a proportion which has become slightly
lower since independence because of expulsions
to India. In the absence of
regular and reliable statistical series, we
have not mentioned the figures for people
of Tamil origin recorded elsewhere,
even though they may number more than 100,000 individuals, as in Reunion
[1987 estimate].
|
Table: Tamil
Population in Sri Lanka, Burma and Malaya 1871-1981 -
(figures in thousands) |
| |
1871 |
1881 |
1891 |
1901 |
1911 |
1921 |
1931 |
1946 |
| Sri Lanka |
203.3 |
320.2 |
313.3 |
497.9 |
563.8 |
635.7 |
854.8 |
816.2 |
| Malaya |
27.5 |
36.3 |
62.7 |
98.0 |
220.4 |
387.5 |
514.8 |
461.0 |
| Burma |
|
35.1 |
71.4 |
99.6 |
125.7 |
152.3 |
184.l |
90.0 |
| Total |
230.8 |
391.6 |
447.4 |
695.5 |
909.9 |
1175.5 |
1553.7 |
1367.2 |
As proportion of Tamil
Nadu
Population (per cent) |
1.5 |
2.5 |
2.5 |
3.6 |
4.4 |
5.4 |
6.6 |
4.9 |
Notes:
Sri Lanka: Population of Tamils and Indian Moors according to
censuses from 1911
onwards; figures for 1981 [Guilmoto, 1987]; indirect estimates
before 1911 based on the total Tamil population.
Malaya and Singapore: Tamil-speaking population, estimates before
1931 based on the
population of Indian origin.
Burma: Tamil-speaking population according to censuses; free
estimates for 1946 and
1981 due to lack of statistical information.
Source: Censuses of countries concerned and my own estimates.
|
The size and direction of migration
flows at different periods are the complex
outcome of the action of three factors: the
availability and the demand for labour on
one hand, and the other, the institutional
conditions (political or social) which permit
such migrations. Analysis in terms of
attracting and repelling factors (pull and
push) makes it possible to distinguish different
periods in the history of migratory
exchanges. The classic illustrations of the
effects of these factors are the departures
precipitated by demographic crises in
South India (1847, 1919 and especially
1876-77), and the returns or repatriations
of 1930-32, as a consequence of changing
circumstances (see Figure).
Yet it is difficult
to separate these factors: we cannot
cynically isolate the poor conditions in
Tamil Nadu, or the narrow interests of the
planters, and make them the sole determinants
of migration. Rather, changes in
the economic system from the 19th century
onwards form a framework within which
the migratory mechanisms operate. Apart
from the coastal regions of south India,
the economic system had previously been
segmented and enclosed at a regional
level, and the labour force was relatively
immobile, often statutorily assigned a particular
position at the local level (by
professional specialisation according to
caste).
As a result of colonial unification,
the system of exchanges intensified and
became more diverse; in addition the
internationalisation of the colonial economy
had the effect of globalising the labour
market, allowing new transfers of labour.
At the same time the capitalist system in
the colonies experienced a rapid leap forward
in certain peripheral regions, particularly
in those zones suitable for plantations;
this development /was obviously
linked to the existence of reverses of cheap
and mobile labour.
Tamil Nadu was already densely populated
in the 19th century, in some irrigated
coastal regions reaching almost 200 inhabitants
per sq k h (1871 figure). While
the population underwent a noticeable increase,
in spite of recurrent spurts of crisis
mortality (epidemics and famines), possibilities
for emigration within India were
limited: urban industrial development had
hardly begun in Tamil Nadu, and even
Madras, the capital of the presidency, was
growing but slowly. Only a few small
mountainous areas in the southern ghats,
such as the Nilgiris, were able to attract
the migratory currents. Economic development was on the other hand, more rapid
and concentrated in other parts of the
British empire.
This structural imbalance
between concentration of population and
concentration of capital could not fail to
lead rapidly to significant demographic
transfers. At the individual level, overseas
employment often represented an insurance
against the risks involved in the
irregularity of farming seasons, as well as
a substantial increase in earnings. Since
work opportunities for labourers were
very limited in south India, and the job
market unstable and stagnant, a new
possibility of employment at a regular
cash salary on overseas plantations
represented for many Tamils an unheard of
hope The wages offered by the planters
were far higher than those current in India
[Kumar, 1965: 140-41] . Migration was thus
shaped by inequalities in the colonial economy. We should note in addition
that once the international migratory
streams had been established, they tended
to reinforce themselves by a cumulative
effect, growing more independent of the
economic conditions which had originally
given rise to them [cf Massey, 1988:
396-991. The existence of migratory networks
between Zuni1 Nadu and other colonies
accelerated migration by reducing
obstacles which had hindered free movement
between the two countries (transport,
uprooting, job-hunting. . .): this
above all was the role of the 'kangani'
system of recruitment which supplanted
contract-recruitment (indentured labour),
and which we shall examine below.
Destinations of Tamil Migration
Economic development in Malaya
(including Singapore), Burma and Sri
Lanka was sufficiently different to cause
noticeable variations in the orientation of
the migration streams at different times
and in the different target countries, even
I when the overall world situation also
sometimes exercised a parallel effect on
the demand for labour. We shall present
a summary of the development of immigration
in these three countries, emphasising
particularly Malaya and Sri Lanka,
which received the greatest number of
Tamils. These descriptions are complemented
by the Figure, which shows the annual
statistics for net migrations of
Indians in Malaya and Sri Lanka; the
series for Sri Lanka is not entirely homogeneous
because before 1911 it includes
only figures for plantation workers (and
their families) (hence the irregularity in
the series). These data are not without
defects, but here they are used only to illustrate
more general hypothesis about
the development of the migratory currents.8
They broke off in the early 195Os,
when significant flows finally dried up
(the area was hardly affected by partition).
The most recent international migrations
affecting Tamil Nadu have remained on
a relatively small scale. These have been
the temporary recruitment of semi-skilled
workers for the countries of the Persian
Gulf, and the 'brain drain' towards western countries, particularly
the United states.9 Today demographic exchanges
between different regions within India are
on a much larger scale than departures for
foreign countries.
Because of its geographic and cultural
closeness, the island of Ceylon enjoyed
ideal conditions for the massive transfer
of labour from south India.10 It takes
only a few hours from the Tamil port of Rameshwaram to Talaimannar on the
western coast of the island- at least as
long as the currents are not too strong, as
they sometimes are during the north-east
-monsoon. From there, until the opening
of the railway in 1917, the migrants had
to travel on foot to the hills in the centre
of the country, or follow the coast to the
port of Colombo. At the end of the last century new sea connections were opened
up between Colombo and various ports
on the Tamil coast such as Tuticorin [1891]. The journey up to the plantations
in the hill-country was no picnic, for it
passed through some particularly unhealthy
areas where malaria was a tremendous
scourge right up to Independence. Mortality
along the way, from cholera.
malaria, etc, was high.
The migrants were organised by an
overseer, the kangani, who was responsible
for them at every stage of their journey
to the plantations. Originally he was also
the recruiting-officer in Tamil Nadu, who
visited the villages of his native region to
persuade agricultural labourers and indebted
peasants to accompany him to
work on the plantations for varying
lengths of time.
The kanganis travelled
with the groups of Tamils all the way from
the place of recruitment to Sri Lanka, advancing
them the money required on their
journey to the plantations. Once there,
they continued to act as supervisors and
were responsible to the plantation owners
or managers for the workers they had
brought, who were usually also indebted
to them for the advances given. The
system was soon complicated by the introduction
of a very Indian stratification
of power distribution, with different types
of kanganis ranged one above the other.
The role of the kanganis was very important
because of the social and financial
powers they exercised within the limited
geography of the plantations. The advantages
of the system were naturally
distributed: the migrants were taken care
of from beginning to end without having
to risk anything in the process of transplantation
except their freedom and
health; and the kanganis and planters
shared the profits from a labour force that
could be recruited in the most flexible
manner.
The hill-country of the island experienced
cycles of prosperity, depending on
productivity and the world market for the
produce grown there. Coffee, which was
the original crop, collapsed during the
1880s under the pressure of competition
coupled with a parasitic disease affecting
coffee. It was replaced principally by tea,
which remains to this day one of the major
exports of the island, but also by rubber,
which underwent a rapid development
at the turn of the century because of an
exponentially increasing demand on the
world market.
Tea cultivation brought
about a qualitative change in the
workforce of the plantations, because it
requires constant care which can be divided
into several precisely-defined tasks. So
the migrations became less seasonal and
more stable, and started to involve
families: unpredictable changes in the
workforce would endanger the schedule
of cultivation. and the settlement of entire
families on the plantations, besides
stabilising the labour force, made it possible
to employ women and children for the
regular plucking of the leaves. However.
the nature of the exchanges (gross totals
of migration far higher than net totals)
shows that the Tamils returned frequently
to India, and the proportion of newcomers
('puthal') was practically always
lower than that of workers who had been
on the island before ('palaiyal').
Fluctuations in the overall volume of
new migrants depended principally on
economic imbalances. The first Tamils left for Ceylon at the
beginning of the 19th century, but emigration became sizeable
only from 1830 onwards, and especially
after 1850. After a period of prosperity.
the disappearance of coffee was reflected
for a short time by a lessening of migratory
exchanges between the presidency
and Sri Lanka, with even some depopulation
of the plantations during the early
1880s.
The success of new crops such as
tea stimulated fresh recruitments for the
estates. and the following decade registered
a record number of net migrants
(2,71,000 in 1891-1901), with the proportion
of women nearing 45 per cent. At the
beginning of the 20th century the demographic
growth of the ‘Indian Tamils’ (the
official label for the Tamil immigrants)
was maintained, although immigration
slackened slightly, while new methods used
on the plantations tended to increase
productivity. During the first world war,
the moves reversed direction as a consequence
of the disturbed economic context
and of new legislation aimed at protecting
the Indian workers.
The vitality of the
resurgence which followed is exceptional:
between 1921 and 1931 plantations and
other sectors of the economy of the island
absorbed more than 300,000 Tamils, not
only plantation workers but also both
labourers going to work in the, towns (in
the ports, on construction sites.. .), and
merchants (and moneylenders). In 1927
alone, the official statistics recorded the
arrival of 285,000 Indians in Sri Lanka.
And yet at the end of the 1920s there was
again a reversal in the economic situation,
and when salaries drop a great many
Indian migrants departed.
The worldwide
depression, which hit the island with full
force mainly because of the drop in international
trade, led to a reduction in the
employment of foreign labour, and for the
first time in 60 years, the inter-censal
migration balance on the island was
negative. During the same period, immigration
regulations were changed to
enable the governments to check mass
migration into a region impoverished by
recession, and these culminated in an
almost total halt to new migrations on the
eve of war, after the prohibition of entry
to unskilled migrants. This trend continued
until the end of the second world
war, and the brief acceleration which
followed was quickly limited by the
policies of the newly-independent governments,
especially that in Colombo, which
wanted to get rid of a community of
foreign origin which in 1946 represented
more than 11.6 per cent of the resident
population of the island. Immigration was
broken off completely in the 19SOs,
and official hostility towards the Indian
Tamils, who remained stateless after
Independence. went on increasing. The
crisis finally led to an inter-governmental agreement between India and Sri Lanka,
signed in 1964, which provided for the
repatriation to India of almost two-thirds of the population of
Indian ancestry.11
Malaya
English settlement of Malaya took
place at a later date, but the lack of sufficient
labour was felt almost immediately.12 The peninsula was relatively sparsely
populated, especially in the interior,
covered with malaria-infested jungles.
Like the Sinhalese, the Malays showed little
inclination to work for the planters,
and the Chinese, who were already settled
there in numbers, were felt to be less
manageable than south Indians. The latter,
already present in Penang by 1786, arrived
in their thousands from the second
half of the last century onwards, to work
on the coffee and sugar estates; this was
the time of ‘indentured labour’, under
which the labourers were bound to their
employer by three-year contracts whose
implications they rarely grasped.
In addition,
the distance which separated them
from their native presidency discouraged
them from leaving at will. Immigration to
Malaya increased towards the end of the
last century. In the first place, the cost of
a passage (from Madras, Nagapattinam
or Karaikal) to Penang or Singapore
became much cheaper. Secondly, the
planters introduced rubber in 1897 and
this very soon took the place of coffee.
From this time on, more than 10,000 net
entries of Indians to Malaya are counted
annually (according to Malayan official
statistics), but male migrants are still three
times more numerous than women. There
is a spectacular development of rubber
growing and of processing industries connected
with it from the beginning of the
century, accompanying an unprecedented
world demand as a result of the growth
of the automobile industry in the rich
countries.
At this same period, the ‘indentured
labour’ system, which was connected
mainly with sugar production, was finally
dismantled and the kanganis become
predominant. Travelling money was advanced
to the aspiring migrants, who then
worked on the plantations under a contract
from which they could withdraw.
Arriving
in Malaya later than in Ceylon, the kangani system never took on the same
importance there, and the workers were
less in the grip of the recruiters. The
number of migrants arriving independently-
among which there were less
Tamils (but more north Indians and
Keralites, etc) and less going to work on
plantations (but often merchants and
labourers hired by the government)-went
on increasing. and created a more fluid
and noticeably less rigid employment
situation, within a society of a markedly
polyethnic character which, to quote Stenson
[1980], functioned more like a commercial
undertaking than a state.
Another
difference from Sri Lanka at this time is
the predominantly masculine character of
the migrations throughout the period,
mainly because of less opportunities for
female employment on the Malayan
estates, and of independent immigration.
It may however be noted that Muslims
amongst the Tamil migrants were
sometimes able to marry Malay women.
Wherever Tamil Muslims immigrated (Sri
Lanka, Burma. . .), their community was
able to forge very solid links with their
local co-religionists, often through
matrimonial alliances.
In spite of the distance between south
India and Malaya, permanent settlement
by the migrants remained insignificant; yet
it was to prove more long-lasting than
elsewhere, for the Indian community
found a favourable niche in the developing
Malayan society. The prosperity of
Malaya during the years after the first
world war led to major influxes of migrants,
with more than 3,50,000 arrivals
recorded in 1926-27; in 1931 Indians, of
whom 83 per cent were Tamils, represented
almost I5 per cent of the total
population, and an even greater proportion
of the labour force, especially in rural
areas (Penang, Selangor, Perak. . .)Together with the strong Chinese presence
which was concentrated more in the
towns, this led to’ the ethnically Malay
population becoming a minority in
Malaya after 1911.
In 1930, there was a brutal reversal. The
planters, who could not dispose of their
produce because of the world economic
crisis, rapidly reduced production, cut
wages and demanded that the coolies
from their estates be repatriated.
Economic stagnation spread to many
other activities in a colony that was based
entirely on economic links with the
industrialised world. Between 1930 and
1932 more than 150,000 Indians were
repatriated, and assisted migrations
(kangani recruitments) were totally stopped.
A brief-renewal of migration is recorded after 1934. but when the price
of rubber dropped again in 1938 the
Indian government prohibited the departure
of unskilled labourers. In December
1941 the Japanese invasion put a full stop
to all migration from India for the duration
of the war. The early years of relative
independence in Malaya were troubled by
numerous industrial disputes, and even
more, by the communist insurrection in
which other ‘migrants’ from the subcontinent
(the Gurkhas of the British
army) became involved.
Migrations
decreased throughout these years, as the
new governments attempted to reduce interdependences
which had been initiated
by the colonial presence. Nevertheless, the
Indian communities which had grown up
from immigration, amongst whom the
Tamils. were largely predominant (some of
them originating in fact from Sri Lanka),
were not much threatened by regional
political developments. Both in Malay dominated Malaya and in
Singapore, the Tamils were integrated without difficulty into a
society where ethnic tensions were more pronounced between Chinese
and Muslim Malays. Many Tamils maintained close economic or family
relations with their homeland, especially the Muslim merchants from
the Tamil coastal areas, whose presence in Malaya predates
colonisation.
Burma
Migration to Burma is far from being
an exclusively Tamil phenomenon; there
had been links between Burma and India,
especially Bengal, for hundreds of years
before colonisation, and there was a well established
community of Indian Muslims
(Rohingyas) in Arakan on the borders of
present-day Bangladesh.13 The migrations
began almost immediately after
occupation of Rangoon (or Yangon), then
only a village, by Anglo-Indian forces in
1824; the spectacular growth of the town
after this is moreover very closely connected
with the arrival of Indian immigrants,
who after 1881 even largely outnumbered
Burmese in the municipal
population. In 1852 and then in 1886 the
British gained control over the rest of
Burma and particularly the very fertile Irrawady valley as far as the towns of
Mandalay and Pengu, and the territory
settled by Indians increased, while
exploitation of the valley soils led to a
great increase in rice cultivation.
Many of
the Indian migrants came from north
India, reaching Burma via Calcutta.
Another section originated along the
whole coast of the Bay of Bengal, from
Orissa (Ganjam) to southern Tamil Nadu
(Ramanathapuram). During the period
covered by the censuses the proportion of
Indians in the total population increased
more moderately than in the other countries
discussed above, reaching a platform
of 5.8 per cent in 1931 (not counting the
Indians in the district of Akyab which
constitutes the Arakan). As in the other
cases shown in the Figure, the migratory
movements sometimes reversed direction
as a result of changing economic circumstances
(1910-11, 1930-31.. .), and
these reversals were sometimes activated
by the anti-Indian agitation which started
in. the 1930s.
Amongst the Indians,
migrants from Tamil Nadu, identified for
all intents and purposes with the Tamil speaking
population, never represented
more than 20 per cent. More than half the
Indians born in the presidency of Madras
recorded in the Burmese census were not
in fact Tamil, but Oriya or Telugu.
One of the characteristics of emigration
to Burma was its temporary and seasonal
nature, with a great many Indian workers
making the return trip within one year. It
is possible too that this kind of circular
migration may have caused a relative overestimation
of the immigrant population
in the censuses.
The female population
hardly increased, representing about one third
of the Tamils recorded in the census
of 1931; yet this proportion of women
among the Tamil immigrants is far higher
than that recorded among the other
Indian immigrants. One cannot help linking
the relatively large scale of female immigration
among the Tamils, whether in
Burma or elsewhere, with the significant
involvement of Tamil rural economy and
their better status in society.
Since Burma was administered as a part
of India until 1936, the movement of
Indian labour was not very strictly controlled
(hence the shortcomings of the
port statistics). A system similar to the kangani system was set up, under the
leadership 'of overseers called 'maistries'
who controlled the job market, recruiting
either directly from Indian villages, or in
Burma itself. The maistry exercised a great
sway over his recruits which was usually
based on indebtedness, and supported by
the law. Tamil labour supplied particularly
agricultural labourers for the rice fields
which made Burma one of the largest riceexporters
of colonial Asia.
Another set of
migrants, who had arrived earlier, contributed
to urban prosperity, particularly in
Rangoon, in very diverse occupations: in
the port, in factories (rice mills), small
businesses, communications (railways,
cycle rickshaws) or services (administration,
the professions). A small number of
Tamils belonging to the chettiyar castes of
Ramanathapuram (in the south-east of
Tamil Nadu) established the first foundations
of a banking system in the country,
in which they played a role quite out of
proportion to their numbers. During the
slump of the early 1930s, which as in other
colonies led to the return of many
migrants, they gained possession of much
of the cultivated land, and were to become
the first victims of the nationalist policies
of the Burmese after independence. More
than elsewhere, the Tamil population in
Burma was very heterogeneous during the
colonial era, and included coolies with no
assets apart from the strength of their
arms as well as some of the wealthiest men
in the country.
After the trauma of the Japanese occupation,
immigration began again, but
Burmese independence brought about
new legislation that was unfavourable to
the Indian presence, and the immigrant
population, most of which had refused
Burmese citizenship and remained stateless,
again began to decline rapidly. During
the 1960s, after many businesses had
been nationalised, several tens of
thousands of inhabitants of Indian origin
had to be repatriated: 1,50,000 in 1964-68
according to the government of Madras
[Chakravarti, 1971:184]; but unlike the
repatriations from Sri Lanka, the rehabilitation
of the Burmese immigrants in
Tamil Nadu was more successful. In the
absence of precise data, it is estimated
today that the Indian community in
Burma numbers about 350,000, of which
a minority are Tamils [Bahadur Singh,
1984]
Tamils Involved in Migration
The development of immigrant Tamil
society in the British colonies was characterised
for a long time by irregularity of
the in- and out-flow of migrants. The
intensity of the migratory exchanges and
their short-term instability constituted
permanent destabilising mechanisms right
up to the second world war. Thus from
1925 to 1935 about 400,000 annual
displacements (gross migration) are
recorded between India and Sri Lanka,
which recorded only 600,000 Indian Tamils in 1931; during the same period,
the average for more distant Malaya,
where 620,000 Indian immigrants were
domiciled, is close to 160,000 movements
per year.
For several reasons the intensity
of the exchanges leads us to think that the
numbers of Tamils counted outside India
represent a virtual population, constantly
depleted and renewed by migratory flows,
rather than a settled, self-renewing
population. We shall now see that this
demographic instability, which looks like
a case of severe socioiogical precariousness
for overseas Indian society, is on the
contrary an outstanding advantage for the
colonial economy, where the size of the
available labour force reacts instantaneously
to the needs of the productive
sector.
The immigrant population, also
because of its characteristically temporary
nature, had for long an unbalanced age
and sex composition, with a preponderance
of young men-even though
among the Tamils, as we have noted,
women were often relatively more
numerous. The birth rate remained very
low until the 1930s. Unable to reproduce
itself in a normal rhythm, Tamil immigrant
society had in addition to face
living conditions that were much more
difficult than the attractive wages offered
on the plantations would suggest. Not
only was the journey dangerous (epidemics
on board ship, marches through
the jungle...), but once the Indians
reached their destination the sanitary conditions
there were drastic.
Ecological
transplantation, the extremely unhealthy
areas where the plantations were situated,
lack of hygiene and health protection, all
contributed to an extremely high death
rate among the immigrants; the oft repeated
argument that the Tamils had
everything to gain by leaving a land of
poverty and famine has difficulty in standing
up in the face of the deplorable situation
which long prevailed outside India, and which the colonial
governments took note of only very tardily, from the 1920s onwards.14
The war in south-east Asia
brought about a very severe deterioration
in conditions. Although this period was
not long-lasting, it was marked by
extremely high mortality amongst the immigrant
populations except, in Sri Lanka.
In Malaya, the Japanese forcibly conscripted
tens of millions of plantation
workers for the construction of the ‘death
railway’ linking Thailand and Burma.l5
In Burma thousands of Indian immigrants
died on a forced march, fleeing
towards India via Assam to avoid the
Japanese advance [Tinker, 1976;
Chakrwarti, 1971]
In fact, expatriate Tamil communities retained their fragile
character for almost a century because of their dependence on
migratory movements for renewal. The real Tamil diaspora formed only long after
the start of departures to the British colonies,
when two phenomena coincided to
give this population demographic stability:
on one side, a lessening in the importance
of the role of annual labour displacements
in the population, and on the
other, a rising proportion of women. The
integration of the Tamils into local society
varied greatly, ranging from the brutal
rejection which occurred after independence
to permanent settlement.
The
geographic isolation of some immigrant
groups, who were often sequestered on the
plantations, doubtless hindered integration,
but other factors had more determining
influence. Communal, national or
religious affiliations are very vital in this
region of Asia, and Tamils were never able
to get assimilated into native groups; even
in Sri Lanka, where there are many native
Tamils. those of Indian origin remained
cut off from the rest of society. In this latter
country, thirty years after the end of
the colonial period, most descendants of
immigrants still lived in the same region
and followed the same occupations as
their forebears.
The lack of diversification, geographically
(in ghettos and pockets of concentration)
and in work (because of
specialisation or lack of qualifications),
combined with the maintenance of their
distinct ethnic identity, gave the overseas
Tamils a specific social profile which
marked them out as scapegoats during
periods of tension.
In Burma, where
resistance to the colonial regime was most
powerful, riots against them prefigured
the vigorous measures of Burmisation
(and expulsions) applied after independence
and reactivated under the rule of
Ne Win. Even the best-established Indians
in government or business had to make
way for new native elites.
Similarly in Sri Lanka the wealthiest Indians gradually withdrew:
the Tamils on the tea plantations were a kind of forgotten relic of
the colonial period, and perhaps owe to the hostilities between
Sinhalese and native Tamils in the Jaffna area the relative peace
they were able to enjoy after independence, until the repatriations
of the 1960s.
It would be reasonable to suppose that
their role in the tea industry made them
indispensable, even though socially
undesirable. It was perhaps been only
when the internal growth of the Tamil
population, with an attendant risk of
unemployment on the plantations, started
to endanger an equilibrium which was
based on their geographical and political
inconspicuousness, that expulsion to India
began to seem an appropriate solution.
Malaya provides a very different example:
the presence of Tamils-or Indians in
general-did not provoke there the same
outbreaks of violence or administrative
hostility as in the other colonies; but it is
not certain that the economic position of
the immigrants was the only factor favouring
permanent settlement there, in spite
of their gradual liberation from the plantation
economy.
In the history and composition
of its population, Malaya
resembles the ‘creole’ countries: regions
that were sparsely populated before the
arrival of the colonisers, who, by engineering
large-scale immigration (whether of
slave or free labour), totally changed the
ethnic make-up of the population, to the
extent that the supposedly ‘indigenous’
groups became minorities. This was the
case on many islands in the Indian Ocean,
but also in the Caribbean and the Pacific
Several of these countries house a population
of Tamil origin that is well
entrenched, even when a minority among
other Indian groups: Mauritius. Reunion,
Fiji, the state of Natal in South Africa.
and the French Antilles, for example.
In
more homogeneous countries, independence
heralded the arrival on the political
scene of an indigenous group with a
strong nationalist agenda. The descendants
of immigrants. like the Tamils in
Burma or the Gujaratis in east Africa,
then had to bow before the storm or run
the risk of expulsion. The polyethnic character of Malayan society
prevented such a polarisation between the sons of the soil (the
Malays) and Tamils. Since we have chosen to follow the migration
from its point of origin, we shall say a few words about the effects
of the phenomenon in Tamil Nadu. The impact. of emigration on the
home population was considerable, frequently responsible for a
lowering of more than 10 per
cent in the natural growth rate between
censuses. Some regions, particularly along
the coast, undoubtedly felt the demographic
effects more than inland districts
which were subject to other migratory
pressures.
In the cases of Sri Lanka and
Malaya, the location of recruitment offices
fixed certain focal points, while the
kanganis too operated for preference in
their own native areas and thus helped
establish specific. migratory routes between
particular villages and plantations.
In some villages, emigration affected all
families of a particular caste, and the
migratory drainage even led to appreciable
local drops in population.16 Most of the
Tamils who emigrated belonged to the
lower castes (harijan, kallar, vanniyar. . .)
and from the poorest sections of the population.
Farmers or pastoralists who owned
a little property-land, cattle, houses were
more reluctant to leave their villages.
For those who left, the opportunity to
work abroad offered a way out of an often
closed situation in their home villages,
where they were almost serfs to the big
landowners, bound not only by economic
and financial dependency (often deep in
debt), but also by their position in the
rigid structure of caste relations.
The
introduction of the market economy into
rural Tamil Nadu, together with the
emergence of commercial farming
directed towards international markets,
weakened the communal socioeconomic
fabric, which had been based on traditional
exchanges of tribute between different sections of the village
society, simultaneously creating a reservoir of potential labour
which was constantly fed
by a sustained demographic increase.
Individual strategies (at the level of the
family or social group) gained importance
over traditional behaviour patterns based
on the largely autarchic economic
equilibrium of the rural community, and
heralded the appearance of more profit seeking
attitudes while stimulating new
forms of social mobility.
The profitability of migration for those
who returned has been described in very
different terms and contexts; but it seems
that few migrants were able to accumulate
sufficient capital to make any lasting improvement
in their situation once they
returned home.17 On the other hand, the
migrants did regularly send their savings
home to India creating a constant
transfer of wealth which was fostered by
the political integration of the British colonies
(migrations to other countries, French colonies or South Africa, lacked
just this advantage). This mechanism
made possible a significant redistribution
of revenues, and productive reinvestments
whose positive effect on Tamil Nadu is
difficult to assess. One additional indirect
effect of international migration was certainly
to lighten the labour market in
Tamil Nadu and lead to an increase in
wages intended to retain potential
migrants.
The social agitation which
began to develop during the 1930s
amongst agricultural labourers in
Tanjavur, the district most affected by out migration,
is an unmistakable indication
of the impact of migration on local
economic relationships; but it is beyond
the scope of this article to explore all the
implications of emigration for social relations.
The economic effects within Tamil
Nadu of the changes brought about by the
departure of a section of the agricultural
labour force also remain even more difficult
to assess than the decisive contribution
made by Tamils to the prosperity of
the colonies where they settled-in many
cases only to be driven out again in the
y a k following the break-up of the British
empire.
Perspectives of Migration Cycle
Standing at a certain distance from the context of Tamil Nadu in the 19th century,
we may ask what lessons are to be drawn
from the migratory experience we have
described here. Indian emigration does
share certain features with the labour
migrations which characterise the wealthy
nations after the last war, in that it involved
large-scale transfers of low-skilled
workers, transplanted into areas with a
different culture, who initially had no intention
of permanently settling in the
target country.
Without this demographic
supply, the inability of the local population
to respond to the increasing availability
of unskilled work, especially on the
plantations, would have hindered the
economic development of the host countries.
Internationalisation of the area of
recruitment. mainly within the British colonies,
enabled a nascent capitalism to profit
from economic imbalances between
different regions and from many advantages
connected with the importation of
labour: lower wages, more docility, more
readiness to accept difficult conditions,
etc. Returns home, high mortality and an
absence of young married couples combined
to reduce the immigrant groups to
a floating population unable to reproduce
or establish itself, thus delaying the formation of the Tamil diaspora
and of established social classes. These phenomena, which we shall link to the migratory
cycle as a whole, are not exclusively Tamil
experiences.
Before returning to this wider perspective,
we would like to attempt to identify
different periods, so as to establish the
various stages of the migratory cycle. By
this term we mean the entire history of the
migratory exchanges taking place between
two periods of demographic equilibrium
(before and after migration). It is certainly
possible to conceive of emigration as an
integral, and even permanent, part of a
given demographic regime; however, a
regular migratory deficit over a very long
period, as in the case of Ireland, is a very
rare phenomenon, since it leads logically
to a demographic decline which will
tend to stop the human drainage. The
migratory cycle, on the contrary, corresponds
to a rupture in demographic
equilibrium within an environment that
is often characterised by an enlargement
of recruitment areas and the commercialisation
of labour.
The Tamil migratory cycle passed
through three successive phases: Migration
began with an early period marked
by a strict control of the flows both in
volume and composition, which were
male subject to the production requirements
of the host country. These migrations,
which are male and temporary,
were apparently under the full control of
the governments concerned, and served
the economy of the colonies.
The
regulatory role lied with the governments,
for whom laissez faire was often the sole
social philosophy, and the power of
negotiation available to the fragmented
immigrants was kept to a minimum. This
period represented a sort of golden age for
colonial entrepreneurs: a labour force that
was plentiful, non-local, and undemanding
responded precisely to fluctuations
in production, without any risk of becoming
an autonomous pressure group. In
fact, the employers saved the costs of
labour reproduction in the wider sense,
and the only additional expense involved
in their reliance on immigration was connected
with transportation of the workers.
We have seen that the 19th century was
the time of the most rigorous forms of
exploitation like indentured labour, which
bore witness to the slave heritage of the
production organisation. But in one way
the system of individual contracts was less
convenient than the collective framework
of the kanganis. a system which soon
came to predominate among the Tamils.
The success to which the long life of this
system attests is doubtless due to its affinities
with agrarian relationships in the
Tamil homeland.
The migrants were in
fact mainly landless labourers whose
working conditions in their original environment
were very close to servitude.
There too, temporary migrations for work
were organised in teams, and departures
were rarely individual affairs. The many
levels in the authority structure
represented by the kangani overseers (who
belonged to higher castes) paradoxically
ensured a preservation of the groups once
they were in the colonies, acting as a buffer
between traditional attitudes and the
more 'modern' labour relationships on the
plantations. The system certainly worked
more effectively and completely in Sri
Lanka than in Malaya, as if indicating the
complete marginalisation of the immigrant
community in the island,
The second phase of the migratory cycle
is characterised by some relaxation of
the economic constraints on labour migration.
Demographic crises in south India
lessened from the beginning of this century,
and distrcss-induced migrations ceased.
ln the target countries, expansion or
contraction of the productive sector continued
to influence demographic exchanges
up to the beginning of the 1930s,
but from then on a significant proportion
of migrants are no longer dependent on
these circumstantial phenomena. This is
the time when an established overseas diaspora is in the process of
formation, which, in spite of its alien ethnic identity, has ifs
roots outside Tamil Nadu. Many
factors contributed to this change. In the
first place, there was an alteration in
government attitudes towards the Indian
expatriates.
Liberalism, which in practice
used to mean indifference, gave way to an
increasing concern for the lot of Indian
expatriates: the Indian government showed
more and more concern for the living
conditions of their subjects, finally prohibiting
emigration to several countries.
This new order of things was undoubtedly
a result of the increasing participation
of Indians in public affairs, and of severe
criticism from nationalists about the
exploitation their compatriots were
undergoing abroad. In the host countries
too legislation evolved and the situation
of the immigrants improved: regulations
were made about their stay, which
facilitated the establishment of families.
Recruitment of women in certain areas
(on the Sri Lanka plantations, for example)
was also doubtless an additional factor
in making the expatriate populations
more balanced.
But the distinguishing
feature relates rather to independent male
migrations: independent as opposed to
assisted migrations (with financial advances),
led by the kangani from
India.. .) are the outcome of new attitudes.
They often make use of the
established framework, to the extent that
the migrant may still rely on a kangani for
his placement. But the 'spontaneous'. migratory system, on the basis of family
village connections and with parallel
circuits for embarkation and employment,
lies outside official control. These migrations
initiate strategies which become progressively
more independent of the system
of total care from the village to the
workplace. This second period is marked
by a progressive 'un-linking' of the
migratory phenomenon from the need for
labour expressed by entrepreneurs.
Independent migrants such as merchants
and entrepreneurs certainly played a
pioneering role at a very early period, but
these often belonged to particular castes
and involved very small numbers. This second
phase, difficult to date precisely
because of the heterogeneity of the
migrants (1920-1940?), came in when
these changes applied to the majority of
departures. Even those who were setting
off for the plantations adopted individual
strategies. In case of difficulties, they may
return for a time to India, or change plantations.
The more dynamic among them
looked for other jobs, leaving the sectors
reserved exclusively for immigrant
labour to take up urban occupations (in
Singapore, Colombo, etc.. .).
It is during this second stage that the
native population begins to feel the threat
posed by the foreign presence, because of
the increasing competition it presents in
many different sectors of the economy.
For this reason social diversification on
the part of the immigrants did not invariably lead to the third and last phase
of settlement, a return to demographic
equilibrium.
In several places, as in
Burma, hostility towards the Indian immigrants
led to their departure once colonial
protection was removed. Thus the
merchants, bankers and moneylenders
from the Tamil chettiyar castes, whose influence
had been considerable all over
south-east Asia on the eve of the second
world war, were driven out of Burma and
then of Sri Lanka. The Tamils on the Sri
Lankan plantations were, as noted above,
protected from hostility by their importance
to export-oriented production, and
by their relative invisibility.
Many of them
did start on the final phase of the
migratory cycle after Independence, for
example by breaking off ties with their
ancestral homeland. In spite of their
marginalisation on the plantations, their
participation in trades unions indicate a
new assumption of responsibility for their
own economic future, and they were able
io avoid [he worst (general expulsion) in
the course of negotiations over their
status. The great difficulty with which
those who were repatriated have settled in
India over the last twenty years testifies
'to the uprooting experienced by these
descendants of immigrants. It remained
to Malaya to enable the Tamils in general
there to complete the migratory cycle by
complete integration into the host society.
Very few expatriate Indian communities
have been able to conclude their migratory
history in this way, for there still exist
countries where the descendants of the
immigrants are treated as second class
citizens (as in Fiji), if they have not been
expelled in the end (as in east Africa).
Paradoxically, this last stage of
migratory historycoincides with the more
or less total halting of migrations, to or
from India: the end of independent migrations
and of direct recruitment in India,
and the slackening off of return migrations.
The closing of frontiers, which
began before the second world war and
became more complete after decolonisation.
confronted the immigrant communities
with a future in the host society; 18 this resulted in a lessening of social exchanges with India, and the diaspora
therefore had to redefine its identity in
relation to other local groups.19 Although cultural reference to Indian
civilisation may have remained strong,
geographic isolation implied i41 obligatory
adaptation to living conditions in the
country of immigration. The degree of
integration probably varied according to
social grouping and the possibilities for
social mobility within the host society.
The long time-span of the history of
Tamil international migrations suggested to
us this attempt at a division into three
periods.
The dating of these different
phases certainly varied in different social
groups (skilled or not, wage-earners or
self-employed...) and different countries.
The sequence of these phases should be
seen from the internal point of view, with
reference to the immigrant populations
and their composition, rather than from
the standpoint of external determinants. Reconstituting this migratory cycle means
above all following what happened to immigrants
who, after being reduced for
many years to an unstable and virtual
population (the first phase), re-formed
themselves in the course of the second
phase through diversification, and finally
became an integral part of the host society in spite of the possible persistence of
distinctive social traits based on origin.20
On this point we differ from descriptions
of immigration based on divisions into
economic or political periods, which
predominate in the literature on the topic;
although it is quite suitable for taking account
particularly of the development of
the flows, we find the economic perspective
which relies heavily on the development
of geographical imbalances between
labour and capital inadequate for studying
the internal development of expatriate
communities.
The perspective from which we have
chosen to approach this historical example
enables us to cast some light on contemporary
labour migrations. in spite of
profound differences between the socio historical
contexts. The first phase corresponds
to the earliest attempts at an
international recruitment: recourse to
foreign labour, through recruitment that
is organised in the country of origin,
under the control of the government of
the host country, with strict control of the
movements so as to give the active population
a variable geometry enabling it to respond
best to structural variations in
employment.
Even the eastern European
countries have made use of this policy (for
Vietnamese labour). Although this type
of system has disappeared in many countries,
for example, West Germany where
the principle of rotational migrations
functioned up to 1970, 21 it still applies in
others (Switzerland, the Persian Gulf
countries). The migrations are temporary,
because dependent on the ocerall situation
and controlled by restrictive legislation.
Any possibility of permanent stay is out
of the question. Most west European
countries quickly passed on to the second
phase, with an unregulated increase in independent
migrations and the first
movements of family reunification; Great
Britain figured ;is a pioneer in this area.22
This phenomenon was accompanied by a
redefinition of the relationship between
the migrations and the economic structures
of the host countries, moving in the
direction of a progressive independence of
migratory phenomenon from labour demand.
This change was made possible mainly by more liberal legislation and
the establishment of migratory networks (ethnic- or family-based. .
.) functioning independently of governmental institutions. For the
western overseas countries policy oscillates between the first phase
(national quotas, professional preferences) and the second
(clandestine immigration, family groups. . .)
The draconian limitation
of immigration in the European
countries from 1973 onwards has not
precipitated the final phase, because
migratory routes-have often circumvented
more lenient regimes (clandestine entrants,
refugees); the mechanism of family
reunification, the other aspect of the
second migratory phase, is still functioning.
But the serious reduction in the flow
of entries observed during the 1980s
characterises the last phase of the cycle,
in which the question of integration arises
because of the limited numerical threat
posed by future immigration. The various
forms of integration observed (assimilation,
ethnic- recognition., .) involve
phenomena which are essentially external
to the migratory cycle.
The main distinguishing feature of the
Tamil cycle is certainly the length of time
over which it extended: more than 50 years
passed between the earliest departures and
the first signs of the formation of a permanent diaspora in
comparison the
European experience has taken place
much more rapidly. Reluctance on the
part of the Tamils to emigrate permanently
for social reasons, and the strictness of
the controls applied, provide the main
explanations for this. Demography supplies
an additional explanation: with the
exception of Malaya, the Tamils rarely
migrated to under-populated areas,
whereas in Europe the demographic
deficit was not inconsiderable.
The differences
observed between the various
target countries suggest that the ability to
absorb a population of external origin,
which is linked with the social and
demographic flexibility of the host society,
is relatively independent of the economic
mechanisms which originally gave rise to
the population transfers.
Notes
[This paper is drawn from a larger study of the
demographic history of Tamil Nadu since the
end of the 19th century. My research in India
was made possible mainly by the hospitality of
the Madras Institute of Development Studies,
and the support of Romain Rolland grants
from the French ministry of foreign affairs in
986-88. A first version of this paper in French
appeared in Revue Europeenne des Migrations
Internationales I, 1991]
1 This refers to the predominantly Tamil area
at the south-eastern extremity of India,
which formed part of the presidency of
Madras during the colonial era. The overall
demographic context is described in
Guilmoto [1992]
2 The economic context is analysed by Baker
[1984]; see also Kumar [1965].
3 Tamil dispersal in south-east Asia involved
mainly Ceylon and Malaya; cf Nilkanta
Shastri (19751 and Sandhu [1962 21-30].
4 This period is described in detail by Tinker
[1974]. For migration in general, see also
Kumar [1965: 128-31, Tinker [1976. 19771. Waiz [1934], as well as the chapters on
migration in the various Census of Madras
(from 1871 to 1931).
5 The recent work of Singaravelou [I9871
deals with Indian immigration to the Caribbean
area. See too the Revue Carbet, [I989]
which contains much information on Reunion
in particular.
6 Here the Tamils who immigrated between
1903 and 1915 were only a few thousand
amongst a north Indian majority, cf Cillion
7 Dutta [1972] shows moreover, on the basis
of an econometric analysis of the migratory
flows between India and Sri Lanka from
1920 to 1938. the specific role of economic
differentials (measured in terms of salaries
and living standards), in addition to the
purely climatic factor (Indian agricultural
seasons).
8 The data are drawn from the tables of
Peebles [1982: 67-70] for Sri Lanka. and
from the appendices of Sandhu [1969:
304-171. These are statistics from the target
countries, which usually underestimate
departures, thus causing owr-estimation of
the total migrant population (this being the
case for Ceylon in the early part of the
period). No comparable figures are available
for Burma, which in any case received a majority
of non-Tamils.
9 Weiner [1982], and Burki and Subramaniam
[1987].
10 On migration to Sri Lanka see especially Jayaraman (19671, Meyer (19781, and
Peebles [1982].
11. Several hundred thousand repatriated Indian
Tamils have been received in India since this,
although for most of themit was not their
country of birth. Their reintegration proved
to be very difficult, mainly because of
their lack of education and the absence of
a receiving network. For more details on this
ment period, see Guilmoto [I9871 and Fries
and Bibin [1984].
12 The standard work on this question is
Sandhu [1969]; see also Stenson [1980] and
Jain [1970].
13 For migration to Burma, Chakravarti [1971],
and Mahajani [1960] may be consulted.
14 In 1885, a semi-official document speaks of
good living conditions for coolies in Ceylon,
requiring no government intervention
[McLean, 1885: 1,5031. For a much less optimistic
assessment, and statistics which
reflect the terrible mortality affecting
the Indian immigrants, see especially
Marjoribanks and Marakkayar [1917:
18-21], Sandhu [1969:85, 171]. and Chakravarti [1971: 49]
15 The Indian population of Malaya, estimated
at 744,300 in 1941, sinks to 599,600 in the
1946 Census, without any significant migration
in the interval. The description of a
Malayan plantation during the Japanese occupation [Jain. 1970 297-3071 gives
a glimpse of the mechanisms of this
crisis.
16 See the examples of Tamil villages described
by Slater [1918], and Thomas and
Ramakrishnan [1940]; the reports of the
decennial censuses in the presidency of
Madras supply statistical details, in particular
of the degree of demographic stagnation
affecting districts with high emigration.
17 Cf. Dennery [1930]. Kumar [1965], Slater
[1918], and Thomas and Ramakrishnan
18 Departures for certain destinations had
stopped before this: Reunion (1882). the
French Antilles (1888), Natal (1911). Fiji
(1916).
19 It may also be noted that in the host country, Tamil identity was often disguised
behind vague local labels such as 'Malbars'(Reunion), 'K(e)lings' (Malaya), 'Sammies'
(south Africa), 'Z'indiens' (Guadeloupe),
'Kala' (Burma).
20 This is clearly the case in Asiatic societies
where inherited distinctions (caste, ethnic
origin.. .) are among the main criteria of
social differentiation. The endogamy of
social groupings guarantees their historic
identity.
21 On immigration in Germany, cf, Rist [I9781
and Leitner [1987]. See also Hammar.[1985]
for a comparative perspective.
22 As is testified by the facilities enjoyed by
the Irish and, up to the I%, by Commonwealth
immigrants [cf Holmes, 19821..
French migratory history of migration is too
long established and complex [Noiriel, 19881
to allow of a brief interpretation here.
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