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Malaysian Indians: Impact And Pain
Narration of an Unending Saga of a Marginalised Community
"The State's Systemic Discrimination on a Vulnerable Segment of Society"
Author: Janakey Raman Manickam
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for letting me speak at this important event. Why do I say this event is important? As we realise, as the days go on, the country's history is slowly being rewritten, and the roles of certain groups of people are omitted and deemphasised. The book being launched today forms the backbone and a constant reminder to all Malaysians of who we are, who we were and how we came here. As the proverb goes, “one who does not know where he came from will not reach where he is going to!”
I have to congratulate Mr Janakey Raman on yet another fruit of his labour. I first came to know Mr Janakey Raman after reading his book, ‘Malaysian Indian Dilemma’, in 2011. I wrote a review of this extensively researched history of Malaysian Indians and their economic plights. The book received a roaring response and was also translated into Tamil.
Mr Janakey has dedicated his life to social research and activism, and he has an arsenal of statistics that could unlock the country's secrets and potentially rewrite the history that we've been told.
In the 1990s, while I was working at Hospital Tengku Ampuan Rahimah in Klang, I was waiting at a traffic light to enter the hospital compound when I saw an incident that made me think. An Indian female ward attendant was waiting for her bus at the bus stop. She looked anxious. She was probably late for something. Just then, another lady, also a female ward attendant, a Malay woman, pulled up to the bus stop in her Perodua Kancil to offer the Indian lady a lift. That got me thinking, “Why is it that even though both ladies do the same job, one can afford a car and the other cannot? Is it that one has excellent economic planning and the other does not? Why is there disparity? Is there a systemic ploy behind this?
Mr Janakey Raman is trying to answer some of the questions in the latest fruit of his labour, “Malaysian Indians: Impact and Pain. What you will read in this book is not pretty and may hurt our leaders, of the past and present, in areas that would hurt them most.
In the 1990s, if you wandered around Wilayah Complex in Kuala Lumpur on Friday nights, you would see scores of luxury or vintage cars parked there. Their owners were, of course, attending their regular watering hole, Chakravarthy. That is the place to be, to convince ourselves that all Malaysian Indians are doing very well. The reality is that our achievements are far from equal. On one end, we have high-achieving, internationally recognised Malaysian Indians. On the other hand, there are the oppressed Indian poor who are stuck in the same poverty trap for generations.
All is not lost. These days, more and more Malaysian Indians are telling their stories so that everyone knows about them. People are talking in podcasts. They are producing books and sending WhatsApp messages about the achievements of past and current Malaysian Indians. This is more urgent now than ever. Every day, the country's history is rewritten, and the role of Malaysian Indians is slowly being erased. Hence, Mr Janakey Raman's book is essential reading as a reminder.
The last thought that I want to leave you with, which has been plaguing me for so long, is this. If you look at the Indian diaspora brought to the world over, be it to South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Suriname, Guyana, or Fiji, they have all done well. In many countries, they have prospered so much that other ethnicities envy their achievements. Well, Fiji even had a prime minister of Indian descent in 1999. In Malaysia, however, despite the country's international achievements, 40% of the B40 population remains Indian. Why? We have to find out!
Malaysian Indians: Impact and Pain tells the story of an unending saga of a marginalised community. The author theorises that this is the result of systemic discrimination, first by the colonial masters, who were mainly interested in milking wealth from the colonies to enrich themselves and their motherland. They were least interested in the welfare of their workers. When they left, Malaysian estate owners emulated the same business model, putting profit over social responsibility. When the 1969 race riots happened, the emphasis was on improving the living conditions of the Bumiputras. Again, the marginalised community was pushed aside. In the 1980s, as industrialisation was in high gear and estates were cleared, workers were left high and dry, with no living skills or housing. They also had to compete with foreign labour for work. They were just expected to find their own space in society.
Decades of failed investments and failed promises filled our history. Even our contributions and existence are slowly being erased as our heritage also disappears. Their temples, which had been around for more than a century, have, in a bizarre, twisted turn of events, become illegal or effectively nonexistent.
You can learn more about these and many more in Mr Janakey Raman’s book. Thank you.
Farouk Gulsara (asokansham@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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