INTRODUCTION

The current ethnic Indian population of Malaysia may be traced to two major streams of immigration throughout the period of British colonialism; namely, the overwhelming majority who were recruited under various labour schemes to provide a low-skilled workforce within the colonial economy, and a minority of technical, professional and business migrants attracted by the economic and commercial opportunities existing in British Malaya. The main forms of labour recruitment consisted of indenture (discontinued after 1910), and the rather more influential kangany system which was terminated in 1938. Nearly the entire Indian workforce was imported from the Madras Presidency, largely because of the colonial preference for Tamil labour which was considered supine, easily controlled and malleable. Skilled and professional migrants included a Chettiar mercantile class, Ceylonese Tamils, Malayalees, North Indians, Sikhs and professional and artisan Indian Tamils.

Apart from an evanescent period of unity throughout World War II, largely inspired by the leadership of prominent Indian nationalist, Subhas Chandra Bose, the Indian population has existed as a series of linked sub-communities, riven by fissures of caste, ethnicity, language, religion and class. In general, the Indian labouring communities, comprising approximately 80 per cent of the population, remain impoverished and marginalized. The resultant “plantation culture” characterized by vocational and social immobility, powerlessness and lack of opportunity, has been increasingly transferred to and reproduced within Malaysia's cities and towns. The cleavage between middle class and working class Indians, initially established as a result of the circumstances attending colonial streams of migration, remains as fixed and potent in contemporary Malaysia as it was in pre-war British Malaya.

The 2000 census indicated that the Indian population in Malaysia comprised 1.68 million people, a mere 7.8 per cent of the total population. Of this number, 1.45 million people, 6.3 per cent of the total population, comprising an overwhelming 84.1 per cent of the Indian community, professed Hinduism. This chapter will examine the transplantation and evolution of this community. It will outline the impact of the major influences which have given Hinduism a distinctive Malaysian impress, and the more recent responses to the escalating pressures of Malay/Muslim ethno-religious dominance. It will suggest that while Hinduism in Malaysia assumes a seemingly endless array of particularistic forms, it is possible to discern a faint but emerging sense of unity driven by continuing reformist impulses.