Starting from the 1970s, as the Persian Gulf became the preferred destination for Malayalis seeking work outside India, the history of Malayali migration to Sri Lanka (previously Ceylon) from the late 19th century was largely forgotten.

But understanding the continuities between these two experiences has broader implications for understanding modern migration.

The religious and caste communities from Kerala – Ezhavas and Muslims – that dominated the migration to Sri Lanka were also the ones that drove the migration to the Gulf beginning in the 1970s. It could be argued that it was the experiences of Sri Lanka and the lessons learnt there that prepared Malayalis for the migrations that came after.

In the current context of increasing xenophobia and occasional attacks on Indian migrants in Europe, Australia and North America, the history of anti-migrant hostility that followed the movement of Malayali workers to Sri Lanka is worth recalling.

In the first half of the twentieth century, Sri Lanka witnessed calls to repatriate Indian labourers as several political parties took strong positions against Indian migration.

As the independence movement in Sri Lanka began to stir in the 1920s, anti-migrant politics gained legitimacy. From the late 1930s, traffic between the two parts of the British Empire started dwindling. It eventually died out...

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