By country · Asia-Pacific
Tamil films have a second life abroad — in the packed cinemas of Malaysia and Singapore, and, improbably, in Japan, where Rajinikanth's Muthu ran for 23 weeks and held a box-office record for 24 years.
Brought from Tamil Nadu to pick Ceylon's tea two centuries ago, Sri Lanka's Hill Country Tamils built the island's greatest export — then spent more than fifty years stateless, citizens of no country at all. How one of the diaspora's most wronged communities finally won a home.
In 1931, nearly half of Rangoon was Indian. Then came riots, a wartime death march, and a dictator's expulsions. The story of Burma's Indians — once the diaspora's richest outpost, now among its most forgotten.
