80 State power and identification schemes in Rakhine that enforced registration and restricted movement for ‘foreigners’ were also being applied to those considered to be working against the interests of the crown. Such individuals could be sent back or deported to the region of their origin (Singha 2013). The same 1864 Foreigners Act, amended in 1948, was also used from the 1990s onwards as a basis upon which to deny Rohingya the right to travel internally between districts without a ‘license,’ even though they were not documented as foreigners (NUI Galway 2010).32 Colonial economies and labour extraction During the British colonial era, there were clear class differentiations relating to the issuance and non-issuance of travel documents. Documents were issued for indentured labourers or ‘coolies’ to travel to specific areas of the British Empire such as Mauritius, the West Indies, and Fiji to work in labour-intensive agriculture such as sugar production. Indentured labour was organised through the East India Company and latterly the Crown. It was a form of bonded labour which was ostensibly ‘voluntary’ but, as the literature makes clear, it was instead a new form of slavery following abolition. The certificates for indentured labour were in essence a way in which labour could be identified and maintained as property and tracked should they abscond (Amrith 2013; Jayal 2013; Roy 2016). Meanwhile, labour and economic migration from other areas of British India into Ceylon, Malaya, Burma, and the Straits flowed freely across both land and sea without checks. It was this type of undocumented, largely circular movement of people that formed the largest share by far of labour migration within the British Empire (Amrith 2013; Singha 2013). Labour was organised through debt and brokered by labour gangs. It was, however, described as ‘free’ labour since it was not officially regulated by the state. With the lack of documentation, it was outside the official purview of the state authorities. Nonetheless, financial incentives and subsidies were offered by the British administration to encourage such migration to Burma due to the particularly rapid intensification of agriculture and industry for export after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 (The Riot Inquiry Committee 1939). Singha (2013) argued that the non-issuance of ID documents to ‘free’ labour was a deliberate strategy, so as to meet the labour supply needs in agriculture, mines, and ports in Ceylon, Malaya, Burma, and the Straits. It was not only the working classes that were mobile across the India/ Burma frontiers but also other classes of Indians. Indians worked in the colonial security services and administration as well as in the commercial sector, and it was their high visibility and dominance in these sectors that was perceived by many Burmese as a source of grievance. The privileging of Indian workers over Burmese by the British was often seen as a deliberate policy of divide and rule by the British (The Riot Inquiry Committee 1939). There was resentment against the Indian commercial and money-lending classes at the time. The money-lending sector was dominated by the chettias from Tamil