1.3.1.3. Labour in South East Asia

However, during roughly the same period, another form of labor migration developed. Tapping into the labor surplus of South India, mostly in the modern-day Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the Colonial bosses of tea, coffee, and rubber plantations in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Burma authorized Indian headmen to recruit entire families and ship them to plantations. About five million Indians, mostly poor Tamils, migrated to these three countries until the system was abolished just prior to World War II. Today, Malaysia and Singapore have local Indians who comprise 7 and 9.1 % of the total population respectively, and are seen as a minority in both.

Around that same time, merchants and traders from Gujarat and Sindh settled in British colonies in the Middle East, and South and East African. For example, Gujarati and Sindhi merchants became shop owners in East Africa, and traders from Kerala and Tamil Nadu were involved in retail trade and money lending to poor Indian peasants in Burma, Ceylon and Malaya. By the time of Second World War, the Indian Diaspora included approximately six million migrants. Out of this total, over one million Indians were in Burma. At that time, there were only 6,000 Indians in United States.

Today this “Old Diaspora” constitutes 60% of Indian Diaspora, or approximately 18 million PIOs. The Old Diaspora is primarily a pre-WWII phenomenon.