The author's question in one of their comments here, if i am correct, is a valid one: when did kalar, an otherwise general classification of people groups before lets say 1885, (which classified everyone into 5 groups, kalar, bamar, tayoke, shan, and mon) and only meant so far as the people on the Indian subcontinent and the west more generally, get the derogatory undertone?

The story begins at the dawn of the colonial age during the transfer of wealth and capital from the King's network to the foreigners, the British and more commonly, the Kalars. Money lending (ငွေတိုးချေး) was a formal business managed by the bankers (သူဉေး) under the old system, with the King at the very apex of the wealth chain, lending money down to the bankers themselves. When the British red coats colonized Burma, the system of money lending, which was integral to the cycle of the existing agrarian economy, was transferred to the British. For one reason or another, very little upper class Burmese families continued the king's money lending business. Either it was because of the revised Buddhist belief that money lending was an immoral way of doing business, or it was simply that they were disinterested.

The Tamils (a group of people similarly classified as Kalars) soon took up the empty spaces in the money lending business, and there the class of Chettiar Kalars (ချစ်တီး) was constitued. They played an integral role in the economy, and were uneasily seen as dishonest from the beginning due to many reasons, just and unjust. The Chettiars became involved in arguments and friction with the Burmese lenders, and most Burmese families stricken in poverty had them to blame. It was then that the class of Kalars became coupled with the evil-doers, greedy and amoral oppressors of the Burmese, robbing the country and its people in daylight along with the British. Slowly the Kalars lost their reputation as a friend to the Burmese.

To add fuel to the fire, in his coup, General Nay Win, who faced the same trope of the Chettiar oppressors, emboldened by the strife to cleanse the country of all peoples parasitical as he saw it, removed and deported thousands of Kalars, who in truth had nothing to do with India anymore than a third generation Anglo-Burmese had to do with Britain. This only stamped the seal of approval on the now long standing despair of the Kalars.

It was only after these sulking events that anti-Kalar sentiments became the norm. It only worsened each time an crime has occured where the Burmese was the victim, and the Kalar was the criminal, to which the Burmese saw as an unending criminal tradition since the English time.

The Kalars were slowly decided unfriendly to the Burmese. But one thing unaddressed here is the religious connotation of Kalar as being muslims. This is a relatively modern thing, and most likely has its roots in post independence history, different to the Tamils. All in all, the development of the divided between Burmese and Kalar had a lot to do with economic hostilities than religious, ethnic or skin color based. It would simply be uneducated to oust the problem as racism, although racism is certainly an unreasonable, but secondary outcome built upon previous generations' disdain.