Although South Asians have had a presence on the Malayan Peninsula for some 2,000 years, most of the present-day community traces its immigration back to the turn of this century. Nearly all of these more recent immigrants came as workers for the rubber plantations and, of this group, most were Tamils whose home villages were in and around Madras (although a smattering of other regions, most notably Malayalis from Kerala, were also represented in this migration). Small numbers of workers began to enter the region almost as soon as the first plantation ventures were launched in the colonies, although the actual number of immigrants was quite modest at first. By the turn of the century upwards of 40,000 workers were entering every year and, during the rubber-boom years of the middle-teens, over 100,000 South Indians were landing up in the Federated Malay States annually. Between 1844 and 1941 (the last year of immigration of this kind), over 2.7 million South Asian workers had immigrated to the Malayan Peninsula, and the permanent community was thought to number some 150,000.

Given the material realities of the Malayan plantation economy (close, segregated living and working conditions, the prime importance of the kangani system of recruitment and supervision, etc.), the largely Tamil Indian community in Malaysia have remained an identifiable ethnicity within the current socio-cultural milieu. Largely working class and formally excluded from most top governmental and municipal positions (largely a result of the Bumi-Putra system of preference written into the Malaysian constitution), the Indian community in Malaysia tends to support labor unions and has a reputation for being quite active in left and generally oppositional politics.

This page is maintained by Richard Baxstrom

Back to Immigration Page