Indian immigration Before the British conquest, the Indians in Lower Burma primarily engaged in trade. The small Indian community was located almost wholly in during and preceding eras. After 1852, they migrated to
Lower Burma because of the jobs available in the expanding economy and the new provincial bureaucracy of the
British Raj. Their population rapidly rose from 37,000 in 1871 in Lower Burma to 297,000 in 1901, with 86% being born outside Burma by that year. Most Indians were from
Madras Presidency and
Bengal Presidency. Over 60% in the last decades of the 19th century were from Madras (present
Chennai). 30% were from Bengal in 1881 and 25% in 1901. There were no effective curbs on Indian immigration until the eve of
World War II despite the implementation of the
Government of Burma Act. By 1931, there were more than one million Indians in Burma, about 7% of the population, and were mostly concentrated in Lower Burma. The census of 1931 enumerated 1,017,825 Indians in Burma with 617,521 born in India. Per the census of 1931, the total population of Rangoon was 400,415, of which 212,929 were Indians. They comprised 2.5% of population in
Upper Burma and 10.9% in Lower Burma. The majority of Indians arrived in Burma whilst it was part of
British India. Starting with the annexation of Tenasserim and Western Burma after the
First Anglo-Burmese War, a steady stream of Indians moved to Burma as civil servants, engineers, river pilots, soldiers, indentured labourers, and traders. Following the annexation of
Upper Burma in 1885, numerous infrastructure projects started by the British colonial government and increases in rice cultivation in the delta region caused an unprecedented economic boom in Burma that drew many Indians, particularly from southern India, to the
Irrawaddy Delta region.
Anti-Indian sentiments After the
First World War, anti-Indian sentiments began to rise for a number of reasons. The number of ethnic Indians was growing rapidly (almost half of Yangon's population was Indian by the
Second World War). Indians played a prominent role in the British administration and became the target of Burmese nationalists. In May 1930, a British firm of
stevedores at the port of Rangoon employed Burmese workers in an attempt to break a strike organised by its Indian workers. When, on 26 May, the strike ended and the Indians returned to work, clashes developed between the returning Indian workers and the Burmese workers who had replaced them. The clashes soon escalated into large-scale anti-Indian riots in the city. Over 200 Indians were killed and their bodies flung into the river. Authorities ordered the police to fire upon any assembly of five or more who refused to lay down their arms, under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code. Within two days the riot spread throughout the country to locations such as
Maymyo.
The Second World War and after At the start of
World War II, almost half of Rangoon's (modern-day Yangon) population was
Indian, As a consequence of the Japanese invasion of 1942, half a million members of the Indian community fled Burma overland into
Assam, largely on foot. The refugees suffered terribly and thousands died. Some of the Indian community remained in Burma during the war; others returned after the war, although many never did. After he seized power through a military coup in 1962, General
Ne Win ordered a large-scale expulsion of Indians. Although many Indians had been living in Burma for generations and had integrated into Burmese society, they became a target for discrimination and oppression by the junta. This, along with a wholesale nationalisation of private ventures in 1964, led to the emigration of over 300,000 ethnic Indians from Burma. ==Culture==