Reclaiming Suvarnabhumi: Postwar Mobility and the Evacuee Identity Card, 1945–50

On the eve of World War II, Indian diasporic communities in colonial Burma (Myanmar) composed one of the largest populations of “Indians overseas” anywhere in the world. The outbreak of fighting between the imperial Japanese military and Allied forces in December 1941 led hundreds of thousands of Indian nationals to leave Burma, seeking shelter in neighboring lands. Approximately half a million people, the vast majority of whom were of Indian descent, made their way to British India, where they would stay for the remainder of the war. With the end of hostilities in 1945, however, the question of what was to be done with these Burma evacuees became a central concern within debates over post-war immigration policies, the regulation of the India-Burma border, restrictions on “unskilled” Indian labor, and other matters. Were these displaced communities to remain in India indefinitely, or would they be allowed to return to Burma to seek out the family members, jobs, homes, businesses, and other fragments of the lives they had left behind? This paper will examine the late colonial and early post-colonial Indian and Burmese governments’ attempts to negotiate the “repatriation” of Burma Indian evacuees to Burma after the war. It will focus on the Evacuee Identity Card, a travel and identification document meant to manage India-Burma migration directly following World War II. Although the Evacuee Identity Card supposedly facilitated the return of all evacuees who wished to traverse the Bay, in practice, it privileged male, non-laboring evacuees who could claim a stable, verifiable residence. By exploring the deployment and uses of this little-known document, this research provides insights into the reshaping of cross-border mobility between India and Burma in the postcolonial moment.