Myanmar Tamils or Burmese Tamils are people of ethnic

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, nativ ...

ancestry who reside in

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...

. Tamils form majority among Indians in

(Burma).

Hindu woman in Myanmar, wearing thanakha

Tamils had the earliest contact with Myanmar during the first-second century CE.Historical Dictionary of the Tamils (2007), Vijaya Ramaswamy, 258p. The Tamil

Chola empire The Chola dynasty was a Tamil thalassocratic empire of southern India and one of the longest-ruling dynasties in the history of the world. The earliest datable references to the Chola are from inscriptions dated to the 3rd century BCE d ...

had trade relationships with various Burmese kingdoms. The large Tamil migration to Myanmar began during the British colonial era. Historically, Burmese Tamils have made their livelihoods as merchants, traders, and shopkeepers as well as manual laborers such as indentured laborers (pejoratively called "coolies"); dockers, municipal workers, rickshaw men, and pony cart drivers. They were also heavily represented in certain professions such as civil servants, university lecturers, pharmacists, opticians, lawyers, engineers, and doctors. According to a report from 1966, there were 200,000 Tamils in Myanmar. Since the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, the number of Tamils has declined dramatically and many fled back to

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

and other countries such as

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

and

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

. The

Burma Bazaar Burma Bazaar is a market run by Burmese refugees in Chennai, India. It is located at Parrys Corner and is one of the several unorganized or grey market shopping hubs of Chennai. The bazaar was set up in 1969 by the Government of Tamil Nadu. It ...

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a States and union territories of India, state in southern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of India ...

was set up in 1969 by Myanmar Tamil refugees. Between 1940 and 1942 many Malaysian and Myanmar Tamils were forced by Japanese occupiers to labour on a railway track between Thailand and Burma. Over 150,000 Tamils died during the project by poisonous animals, illnesses, exhaustion and Japanese torture. The majority of the Tamils in Myanmar are

Hindus Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...

. and there are many Tamil Hindu temples in and around

Yangon Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government ...

(Rangoon). There are many Tamil Hindu temples in and around

Lower Burma Lower Myanmar ( my, အောက်မြန်မာပြည်, also called Lower Burma) is a geographic region of Myanmar and includes the low-lying Irrawaddy Delta (Ayeyarwady Region, Ayeyarwady, Bago Region, Bago and Yangon Regions), as we ...

region too. Many Myanmar Tamils have a Burmese name and some don't speak

well or fluently, but they work to preserve their Tamil identity. Tamil community (along with other ethnic groups and races) sometimes faces discrimination in Myanmar but very less than other ethnic groups like the

Rohingya people The Rohingya people () are a stateless Indo-Aryan ethnic group who predominantly follow Islam and reside in Rakhine State, Myanmar (previously known as Burma). Before the Rohingya genocide in 2017, when over 740,000 fled to Bangladesh, an ...

and

Muslims Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abraha ...

. Retrieved 30 January 2017 After he seized power through a military coup in 1962, General

Ne Win Ne Win ( my, နေဝင်း ; 10 July 1910, or 14 or 24 May 1911 – 5 December 2002) was a Burmese politician and military commander who served as Prime Minister of Burma from 1958 to 1960 and 1962 to 1974, and also President of Burma ...

ordered a large-scale expulsion of Tamils. Although many Tamils had been living in

Burma Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

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 Tamils from Burma. Many Tamils returned and were given 175 kyat for their trip to India. This caused a significant deterioration in Indian-Burmese relations and the Indian government arranged ferries and aircraft to lift Burmese of Tamil ethnicity (also other ethnic Indian) out of Burma.

References

{{Tamil diaspora

Ethnic groups in Myanmar

See also

References