‘Send millions of Indian peasants to Brazil to eradicate poverty and starvation’

In February 1974, Indian President VV Giri and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi received a letter from Kerala with an unexpected request: “promoting a mass emigration of Indian peasants” to Brazil.

The letter had been sent by Mathew Pallithanam, the organising secretary of the Indo-Brazilian Friendship Association in the coastal city of Alleppey. Along with the letter, the association attached a detailed plan titled “An Inter-Continental Exodus” that described the proposed mass migration to Brazil as a “must for eradication of human starvation and poverty”.

“The sponsors of the proposal fervently hope that if it [the emigration] could be achieved, it would be an unprecedented step for the liberation of the suffering of millions of people in our country and for the welfare of all mankind,” Pallithanam wrote in the letter.

But why Brazil? “A vast country in the New World, nearly thrice larger than India in area and of surpassing natural facilities and potentialities, but only 1/7th of India in population has already stretched forth its hands to India for joint struggle for greater prosperity,” the proposal said.

It went on to add that Brazilian President Artur da Costa e Silva had discussed the idea with Indira Gandhi during her visit to the South American nation in 1968.

Diplomatic relations

Neither Pallithanam…

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