Burma

"The pattern of emigration of Telugus was different as compared to the other important South Indian community, i.e., Tamils. For instance, since the middle of the nineteenth century Tamil lower caste indentured and free labourers mainly migrated to Ceylon and Malaya, while the Telugu coolies went to Burma. In other words, what was Ceylon to the Tamils, Burma was for the Telugus.

To draw a contemporary parallel, just as the Gulf and Middle-East region is important to the Malayalees to earn money, in the earlier days Burma was the chief source of remittences for the Telugus. If the Tamil labourers migrated to Ceylon to work mainly in tea estates, the Telugu coolies worked in the rice fields, dock-yards, industrial and urban sectors of colonial Burma. South Indians were one of the important, and in some countries the major ethno-linguistic groups among the Indians living in the above countries in the 1930's and 1940's. The pattern of emigration of Telugus was also different when compared to other important North-East Indian communities, viz., the Biharis. For example, from the mid-nineteenth century lower caste indentured and free labourers from the Coromandel Coast migrated mainly to Burma, Malaysia, Mauritius, and South Africa, while the coolies from U.P., Bihar, Bengal provinces, etc., went to the West Indies, Caribbean Islands, and Fiji in large numbers.

The South Indian coolies were primarily drawn from among the lower Sudra and Dalit castes/communities and majority of them, i.e., around 90% worked as unskilled labourers. While the lower Sudra castes and the Dalits mainly worked as unskilled/manual labourers, the upper-caste persons worked mostly as professionals, employers, contractors, commission agents, money lenders, traders etc. The Telugus dominated many fields of manual work in Burma."

-Contentious Connections: Social Imagination in Globalizing South Asia