Partners in Empire? Co-colonialism and the Rise of Anti-Indian Nationalism in Burma, 1930–1938

Abstract

ABSTRACT On 28 July 1938, anti-Indian, Islamophobic riots broke out countrywide in colonial Burma for the first time. Scholars have argued that the rapid, extensive, and non-assimilationist nature of Indian immigration to Burma led to anti-Indian prejudice, but this approach does not explain why freeing Burma from India seemed to be more important to Burmese nationalists in the 1930s than freeing Burma from Britain. In this essay, I argue that Indian elites were acting as colonisers, or ‘co-colonialists,’ in Burma. Unlike in any other colony in the British Empire, it was Indian elites that controlled the majority of the capital and land in Burma and they used their administrative power to ensure that it remained that way by appropriating racialised language from Europeans. However, right-wing Burmese nationalists used the entire Indian immigrant community as a scapegoat, leading to working class Indians being wrongly targeted for political and economic issues caused by the elites. This argument demonstrates how anti-immigrant nationalism serves only to divide by race rather than to challenge systemic power. It shows how anti-Indian Islamophobia became a fundamental part of Burmese nationalism in light of the present-day Rohingya crisis. It also reshapes the way historians view colonialism by demonstrating that non-white elites could sometimes work within empire to become colonisers themselves.