The Indian problem – what are its roots?

The Indian problem – what are its roots?

By Dr I Lourdesamy

There was an online forum on the Malaysian Indian problem on June 28, attended by 100 or so participants and moderated by Denison Jayasooria. It was interesting to me because a similar discussion was held in 1972 at Universiti Malaya where I was on the panel. The topic was the same – The Indian Problem.

The Indian problem is not new, neither are the attempted solutions. The problem began in the colonial period.

The problem then was the exploitation of Indian labour in the estates and in the government where Indians worked mostly as municipal workers. Government wages were low and the living quarters provided appalling. This was Indian urban poverty.

The remnants of it can be seen today. There was no upward social mobility for the urban Indian. There was little educational opportunity for their children, except for the local Tamil schools which were in a deplorable state.

One “good” thing was that the urban Indian had a job and a roof over his head. He no longer has this today. This explains the many social and economic problems faced by the B40 urban Indians now.

The Indian migrants in estates lived under slave-like conditions. The European planters and their staff exploited them economically and socially. Wages were low, working hours long (10-12 hours a day), housing was crowded, sanitation and health facilities were almost non-existent, and their women were molested.

The noted historian, S Arasaratnam, writes that the newly recruited estate workers were “cleansed with pesticides and docked around their necks with the name of their estates and shipped under the most deplorable conditions”.

How different was this to the way the Africans were brought to America to be slaves?

The Indian problem is not just economic. It is the destruction of the Indian dignity and self-image. Indians became a community that was despised with no social status.

The problems we encounter with some Indians today can be traced back to the period when their ancestors were coolies and rubber tappers.

The British colonial government did little to protect the estate workers. Generations of Indians grew up knowing only the estate, the estate Tamil school, the estate temple, and the estate toddy shop.

Indians in the estates lived in abject poverty. Those not in the estates also lived in abject poverty, urban poverty.

Although the employment system for Indians in the estates and the government was exploitative, it had one merit. It provided job security and housing. Indians were to realise the full significance of this only when they lost it.

With the fragmentation of estates beginning in the 1960s, Indians who had enjoyed security in the estates suddenly found themselves displaced and lost. They had no job and no place to stay. They started migrating to the towns and in the process compounded Indian urban poverty. They had no skills for urban employment.

Similarly, the colonial government had been an important source of employment for unskilled urban Indian workers, both men and women. Though exploitative, large numbers of Indians had jobs and houses to stay. Whole family members, for example, worked in the Ipoh Sanitary Board and lived in the labour quarters.

Displacement of estate workers

As Malays started migrating to the towns after 1957 and with the New Economic Policy (NEP) since the early 1970s, government jobs started moving to the Malays.

Just like the displacement of the Indian estate workers due to fragmentation, the urban Indian worker in the government also got displaced. This process was hastened by privatisation in the government and the coming of foreign migrant workers.

Fewer Indians got employed in the local government departments and agencies. They not only lost their jobs, but they also had no place to stay.

Indians did not have the skills nor the education for alternative employment. This was the beginning of the many social problems that we see today among Indians in the urban areas.

Under agitation from Indian leaders in India and Malaya, the British colonial government enacted laws to improve the working and living conditions of Indian labour.

The Straits Settlement Ordinance of 1885 regulated wages for indentured labour. This was followed by labour codes in 1911, 1927 and the Rump Labour Code of 1933 which dealt with the health and living conditions of estate workers.

In 1936, the Central Indian Association of Malaya submitted a memorandum for the betterment of Indian labour conditions. Local Indian associations like the Kinta Indian Association in Ipoh were active in the Indian cause.

Klang was a hub of Indian protest activities. The largest strike of estate workers for better working and living conditions took place in Klang in 1941.

V Kanapathy Pillay formed the Klang Indian Workers Union which was openly anti-British and leftist. He was executed by the British.

All these pressures forced the British to end the indentured labour trade in 1948. The forming of the National Union of Plantation Workers (NUPW) in 1954 added a new level of protection for the estate workers. The National Land Finance Co-Operative Society (NLFCS) established in 1960 was significant in denting estate fragmentation and its adverse effects on workers.

While there were improvements, there was no significant change to the Indian problem when Malaya achieved independence. Indians were in the estates or worked as municipal workers in towns. Most were still in abject poverty, deprived economically and socially.

The real problem was the stigma attached to the Indian community, particularly the Tamils (which constituted about 80% of the Indians). They came to be viewed as uneducated, uncouth, and dirty (municipal work was dirty work).

This partly explains why “keling” came to be used to identify Indians. The Indians “absorbed” the stigma and it became self-fulfilling in their behaviour and motivations.

This problem has not gone away. Any attempt to deal with the Indian problem today must include building the self-image of the Indians, away from the past determinism, docility and hopelessness.

The Indian problem is partly in the Indian mind.