History of Malaysian Indians 2

History of Malaysian Indians 2

In the first article we had a brief look at the ancient connections that Indians have had with this region. This connection was strong enough for historians to call this region Greater India or The Indianised States of South East Asia. But this ancient relationship plays no role when it comes to the general state of the Indian community in this country today, as we have to draw our immediate history from more recent events.

The Indian influence began to penetrate the Malay region very early in time. “An Indian Era of Malay history” existed in Malaya until about the beginning of sixteenth century. Most of the south Indians who migrated to Malay Peninsula during the early years went in connection with trade and commercial activities. The early migrants were basically drawn from the traditional trading communities of south India like the Chettis and Komatis; whereas those south Indians who emigrated to Malaya during the nineteenth century when the plantation economy emerged were chiefly “illiterate, cheap docile” labourers. (K. S. Sandhu, “Indians in Malaya: Immigration and Settlement, 1786-1957″, Cambridge, 1969)

Indians have been synonymous with the estate economy from the 1870’s until the 1940’s. The growth and the distribution of the South Indian population in Malaysia were closely related to the growth of rubber, palm oil and sugar estates. Plantation of rubber for example, grew from 350 acres in 1877 to two million acres by 1940. As early as 1918, rubber exports from Malaysia supplied half of the global consumption for that commodity. This rubber ‘boom’ created massive demand for manual labour. As the indigenous population did not come forward to supply the energy and strength needed to fuel this growth, the plantation owners had to look towards South India for labourers who would work for fixed hours daily.

South Indians were also valued as the best ‘metal breakers’ and specially adapted for road construction, so they found employment on all such road and railway projects. The labour that these early Indian migrants, our forefathers, provided to this country cannot be measured, and must never be forgotten.

Labourers were recruited mainly using the ‘Kangany’ or ‘Maistry’ system. Estate, factory and mill owners rarely hired the labourers they needed directly, this was contracted out to the Kangany. The Kangany will then have to ensure an adequate and regular supply of labour to mills and plantations, and was paid a premium for each person that was recruited.

Since these middlemen were from the same local society as the labourers they recruited, they had the power to engage, discipline, control as well as educate those they hired on behalf of the owners. The middlemen frequently visited the rural areas and lured the economically and socially vulnerable villagers by painting plantation life in bright colours and offered them travel and other expenses as an additional inducement. By their personal approach and standing in the local society they could and did influence the decisions of the prospective emigrants.

The power to offer employment made the relationship unequal, turning into a pattern of patronage and exploitation between the Kangany and the labourer. A system of salary advances, initial indebtedness, the subordination of labour to the middlemen, illegal deduction from the wages of workers under employment, compulsory contribution of free labour were the main features of the Kangany recruitment process.

P.E. Baak, “About Enslaved Ex-Slaves, Uncaptured Contract Coolies and Unfreed Freedmen” in Modern Asian Studies, Vol.33, No.1, 1999, p.124.

H. Tinker “A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas, 1830-1920″, London, 1974

These two titles say what must be said. That the exploitation of Indian labour by the colonial powers and its middlemen was a form of slavery, where unfreedom, for want of a better word, was the state of its sufferers. Before we look further into this chapter of history, let’s take a brief look at the life of one of the emigrants.

He had to stop schooling at a young age because of poverty. Having no choice, he began working at that young age in the village where he was born. He earned enough to support his elderly parents and send his siblings to school. When the time was right, he married the girl chosen for him and was blessed with two beautiful children.

One day, an agent came to his village and spoke to the young men there. The agent was looking for workers to work in Malaysia. The agent said he will take care of all the details of travel and permits for anyone that was willing to go abroad and work hard for two years. The agent would even loan the money to those that were interested but could not afford the sum, about twenty five times the average monthly income in the village, needed for travel and the necessary papers. He promised a job with an initial salary twice what the young men could earn in the village. There would be two increments every year, a day off every week, and accommodation and food provided for the entire two years.

The agent also promised better jobs with even higher salary for those that did well in their first year. Taken in with the promises of the agent, and hoping to provide a better life for his children than he had, the young man bade a tearful goodbye to wife and family, and left for Malaysia with high hopes.

The reality in Malaysia was different. He had to work twelve to fourteen hours everyday, seven days a week. There were only three days holiday for the entire year, when the owner shut the doors of the business to celebrate Deepavali. Food was cooked communally, and was simpler than the fare he had grown up on in the village, and was never enough.

His lodging was a cramped room shared with 4 other workers, and his bed was a cloth on the cement floor. His identification papers were kept by the owner, making it impossible for him to go anywhere apart from work and home. But the worst fact was that he and his fellow workers have not been paid a single cent for the past six months.

If they asked for money to send some home to their family in the village, they are beaten up by the owner and his men. They can not inform those back home of their situation, as they are afraid that their wives and family would not be able to take the news, and might do something rash. They can only wonder how their family was meeting the monthly loan payments.

Unfreedom, indebtedness, forced free labour, inhuman living conditions, cruel heartless masters, and no help from anyone.

The year is 2008, the place is some of the businesses in Brickfields of Kuala Lumpur, the victims are the poor emigrants from the villages of South India, and they are exploited by agents from their village. The only difference is that their masters are no longer from the colonial class, but are Malaysian Indians.

This is modern day slavery, a reincarnation of colonial practises, in our midst. As long as we allow this to continue, we have no reason to complain of being a disenfranchised people, for we turn a blind eye to those that suffer as our forefathers did.

© Jeevindra Kumar 2008