While rummaging through some old papers at home some time ago, I came across a slim, burgundy-coloured, cloth-bound book. The label on it said ‘Natesan Rajan, SSLC Book’. It was my late father’s SSLC certificate.
He had passed the exam as a student of the Danish Mission School in Tiruvannamalai, in 1943 at the age of 14, with flying colours. It had no previous record of his studies in the school and he had been given exemption from Tamil. The reason: he was a ‘refugee/repatriate from Burma’.
At a time when the Rohingya are fleeing Myanmar in hundreds of thousands, few recall another exodus from that country, in 1942, when the Japanese marched into Burma during the Second World War. The British Army retreated, and fearing both the Japanese and Burmese, hundreds of thousands of Indians fled at the time. My father’s family was among them.
I heard the story many times from my grandmother.
My grandfather and his brothers had gone to Rangoon (now Yangon) in 1915, with their paternal uncle who already lived and worked there. In those days, many Indians were employed by the colonial British government, mostly in the office of the auditor general or in the railways.
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