Police Commissioner Office & High Court Nearly Above 1000 Pirated DVD & smuggling gods Shops In Chennai south Organizing Business Interests in the City 34Indian repatriates from Sri Lanka have long offered the best illustration of a returnee community to have been able to successfully defend its economic interests, at the state level in particular (Dodge & Wiebe 1981, Kanapathipillai 2009). Tamil returnees from Sri Lanka indeed formed in the 1960s the United Front Federation for the Repatriates (ibid.: 159-162). The association is still based in Madurai (Tamil Nadu) and defends throughout India their socioeconomic rights.26 But whilst the Sri Lankan returnees opted for nation-wide sociopolitical mobilization, the Indian repatriates from Burma appeared to have been more locally involved, especially in Tamil Nadu. They rather systematized their mobilization at the level of their local urban and peri-urban spaces Organizing Business Interests in the City Indian repatriates from Sri Lanka have long offered the best illustration of a returnee community to have been able to successfully defend its economic interests, at the state level in particular (Dodge & Wiebe 1981, Kanapathipillai 2009). Tamil returnees from Sri Lanka indeed formed in the 1960s the United Front Federation for the Repatriates (ibid.: 159-162). The association is still based in Madurai (Tamil Nadu) and defends throughout India their socioeconomic rights. But whilst the Sri Lankan returnees opted for nation-wide sociopolitical mobilization, the Indian repatriates from Burma appeared to have been more locally involved, especially in Tamil Nadu. They rather systematized their mobilization at the level of their local urban and peri-urban spaces. One of the most characteristic patterns of the socioeconomic mobilization of the Burmese Tamil repatriates was the creation in the 1960s of associations and trade unions looking after the welfare of traders gathered in various “Burma Bazaars” throughout Tamil Nadu. Beyond the transit camps and evacuee centers they were first resettled in, Burmese Tamil returnees gradually set up illegal markets and bazaars in the downtown city areas of Madras, Vellore, Trichy, Madurai, and a few other bustling commercial towns in South India. From the 1960s, thriving “Burma Bazaars” have therefore mushroomed on sidewalks, port jetties and railway stations throughout the region. K. Gurumurthy, who arrived from Rangoon at Madras port in 1965, summons up: The story is that initially [in 1964] the Burma repatriates settled in their camps, in other parts of the cities they took the foreign goods which they [manage to] bring from Burma and went to sell them at the Beach Station [in Georgetown area, downtown Madras, near the port of arrival of the repatriates], because there it was the main junction; lakhs of people came through the junction every day. [...] When they exhausted all their personal belongings, they started buying off stuff from the new arrivals from Burma, right on the platform, putting a towel [on the ground] and starting their business. After a few months of this daily routine, shops were progressively erected in concrete along North Beach Road and consequently, without waiting for the sanctioning of the local urban administration, the “Burma Bazaar” of Madras was born It is still one of the city’s most bustling market places, where foreign goods, pirated DVDs, mobile phones and TV screens—now imported mainly from Singapore or Kuala Lumpur—are readily available. In 1966, the Tamil repatriates organized themselves in congregations and trade unions to look after their specific interests and support the emergence of the Madrassi Burma Bazaar, which rapidly transformed into a significant trading place of foreign commodities. Logically, this raised much concern among the local custom departments and state fiscal administration at a time—the 1960s—when India was much reluctant to open its domestic economy to foreign international trade (and thus, smuggling). Mr. Lourdusamy, born into a Burmese Tamilian family of farmers from Pyapon township, deep in the Irrawaddy delta, was sixteen years old when he reached Madras in August 1965. He is now a committee member of the Burma Tamizhar Marumalarchi Sangam, the association founded in 1966 to protect the interests of the Burma Bazaar’s shopkeepers. Initially, he recounts, the main objective of this trade union-style association of Burma repatriates was to resist the pressure from the Customs Department and negotiate with the local urban administration the right to sell freely the commodities imported from Burma—and later on, from elsewhere in Asia. As observed by Manuel Castells in his seminal work on urban social movements, poor households and new migrants commonly push the boundaries of public restrictions in the urban spaces they have recently moved to, challenge city regulations and set up informal—and therefore illegal—trading spots to earn a living (Castells 1983). This is a political act in itself, as the urban dwellers, knowing the illegality of their actions, organize nonetheless themselves to counter the urban administrations attempting to regulate. The Burma repatriates, upon disembarkation in Madras, often had no cash or liquidities—especially after the 1964 demonetization of the Burmese kyat ordered by Ne Win’s government, which deprived them from most of their savings. Yet upon arrival, as they still possessed a few fancy clothes, casual jewels and watches, as well as cosmetics, sunglasses, and even small radio transistors and coffee percolators, they could sell off those products on sidewalks to earn a few Indian rupees to start off their new life. Grippingly, the Burma Bazaar would later on become an epicenter for all types of smuggled commodities from Asia, and beyond. Whenever a ship from East Asia docked in Madras port in the 1960s and 1970s, the activity of the bazaar would increase tenfold with shopkeepers replenishing their stocks of imported (or smuggled) foreign goods. These patterns have continued until today; Madras’ Burma Bazaar still lives up to the reputation of an ill-disciplined market selling forbidden and undeclared goods. Mr. Lourdusamy remembers the struggles of the very early days of repatriation in the 1960s and 1970s: the tough negotiations with the local bureaucracy and corrupt police, the estrangement from the rest of the local Tamil society, and the difficulties to get proper housing. But now, he proudly claims, the second generation of returnees is quite well-off, provided with good education and jobs. The Burma Bazaar nowadays shelters around 1,000 shops and boasts about 10,000 informal employees. As the sole trade union of the place, the Burma Tamizhar Marumalarchi Sangam is still much concerned with their welfare. It often clashes with the authorities during crackdown on trafficking and piracy, in regular attempts to curb the lucrative underground activities of the open market. Another “Burma Bazaar” was created in 1981 in Vellore, 150 km to the west of Madras. During the 1970s, a greater number of Tamil Muslim communities repatriated from Burma. Unwilling, or unable, to resettle in the already crowded areas of the Burma Colonies of Vyasarpadi, many have moved deeper inside Tamil Nadu. Between 1969 and 1971, local authorities created three Burmese colonies around the city of Vellore: Vasandha Puram, K. K. Nagar and Periyar Nagar. Today about 500 repatriated families are dwelling these Muslim-dominated colonies, asserts Peer Mohamed, a Burmese Tamil Muslim who relocated to Madras in July 1965 at the age of 14, but migrated five years later to Vellore with his family. He now owns a small garment shop in the middle of the locally known “Burma Bazaar”. The bazaar expanded through the 1970s, and in 1981, the local traders gathered around the Vellore Burma Bazaar Maruvazhvu Merchants Association. The association is now run by Mr. Sitaraman, and still looks after the fortunes of about 60 shop owners and their numerous employees One trader there, Mr. Farook, born in Vellore in 1971 from Burmese Tamil parents repatriated in 1967, admits however that the second generation of repatriates is however not much preoccupied by the “Burma” component of the association’s name, but rather by the “merchant” one. “We’re all Indians now,” he smiles. The association indeed now serves as a mere trade union, well-established and influential locally; but it does not look after the specific interests of the Burma repatriates. Most have now retired, and the substantial majority of the shopkeepers and employees are Tamilians born in India, completely disconnected by the Burmese background of the elders who repatriated four or five decades ago
Posted on: Thu, 03 Jul 2014 07:13:17 +0000
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