Resettling Burma’s Displaced: Labor, Rehabilitation, and Citizenship in Visakhapatnam, India, 1937-1979 Open Access
Meyer, Emma (Spring 2020)
Abstract
This dissertation investigates the creation of refuge for displaced people in twentieth-century India. Between 1942 and 1979, approximately one million people of Indian descent fled Burma (now Myanmar) and sought refuge in India. The first wave of approximately 500,000 refuge-seekers arrived in 1942 during the evacuation of Burma caused by the Japanese military takeover of the colony. Nearly two decades later, a second wave of roughly 300,000 displaced people of Indian descent repatriated to India after the 1962 Burmese military coup, which had led increased economic, political, and social restrictions to be placed on minority ethnic populations in independent Burma. In both instances, the arrival of these “evacuees” and “repatriates” in India generated responses from the Indian government, which offered them refuge.
My research focuses on Visakhapatnam, a district along India’s southeastern coastline, which became an important staging ground for the resettlement of displaced people from Burma. My work explores the creation of “relief” and “rehabilitation”, which were two central tenets of refuge in modern South Asia. It tracks their development over the course of more than four decades, from the 1940s through the 1970s, bridging the colonial and postcolonial eras. My project also investigates how displaced people in Visakhapatnam claimed rights and entitlements, analyzing how their struggles to survive and live meaningfully played an important role in shaping policies and practices of refuge.
Emphasizing histories of migration, displacement, and “rehabilitation” in a regional, inter-Asian context, my work builds on previously unexplored archives to trace the local dynamics shaping responses to displacement in Visakhapatnam. It illustrates how regionally-grounded histories of refuge can contribute to the interlinked scholarship on migration and humanitarianism. Using this framing, my research critically reflects on historical literature on displacement, refuge-making, labor, and citizenship.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: National Boundaries and a New Border: Regulating Indian Immigration to Burma, 1870-1942 46
Chapter 2: The Evacuation of Burma and the Contours of Colonial ‘Relief’ 100
Chapter 3: Alliances, Claim-making, and Citizenship: The Burma Indian Evacuees in Visakhapatnam District, 1942-1953 158
Chapter 4: Fraught Crossings: Class, Documentation, and Citizenship at the India-Burma Border, 1945-1950 217
Chapter 5: Building “Rehabilitation” for Burma Repatriates: Displacement, Documentation, and Development
in Postcolonial India 277
Conclusion 347
Bibliography 358
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