As the latest season of the gritty spy thriller Family Man wins over the internet, one scene shines a spotlight on Tamils living in India’s Northeast—specifically the border town of Moreh in Manipur . In the scene, the protagonist Srikant Tiwari (Manoj Bajpayee), his colleague JK (Sharib Hashmi), and Stephen Khuzou (Paalin Kabak) meet a policeman named Michael (Vijay Sethupathi) at a small Moreh restaurant plastered with pictures of Tamil film stars and a menu written in Tamil . When JK asks, “How come there are so many Tamils in Moreh?”, he touches on a little-known chapter of colonial migration and post-colonial displacement.

Moreh today hosts a sizable Tamil-speaking population, with the Moreh Tamil Sangam estimating roughly 3,000 Tamil speakers in the area. They are one of sever

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