Last year was a year of semantics on Hindu temples in Malaysia, sparked primarily by the controversial relocation of a century-old temple in Jalan Masjid India, Kuala Lumpur.
Public debates, especially on social media, strayed wildly beyond the case, with certain parties unfairly questioning the right to exist of a generalised, largely imaginary category of temples that do not have land titles.
To understand this, it is necessary to delve into the history of mass South Indian immigration to Malaya.
After the outpost-building efforts of the Portuguese and the Dutch, the British arrived with a more systematic focus on empire-building, establishing a civil administration designed to optimise wealth extraction.
In the late 1800s, the British discovered the prolific rubber-producing tree Hevea brasiliensis in Brazil, and its seeds were brought to Malaya for trial planting. Among the places where the first seeds were planted was Kuala Kangsar, where “Malaya’s First Rubber Tree” survives today as a 150-year-old living landmark.
This enterprise did not take long to prove successful. The systematic British approach called for leveraging resources, both human and material, across various colonies, and labour was brought in from South India under the kangani (overseer) system.
Under this system, indentured labourers were brought in alongside others enticed by promises of free accommodation and land for subsistence farming. The kangani relied heavily on family and communal ties to recruit workers from his home region.
They came in large numbers to clear jungles and plant rubber seedlings. Tapping latex, collecting it, and working in estate factories producing exportable ribbed smoked sheet rubber were extremely labour-intensive tasks.
Huge estates were established, with rows of workers’ quarters commonly referred to as labour lines, resembling small towns.
Among the estate owners’ promises was the allocation of land for building temples. Because the labourers came from various parts of South India, temples were often segregated by sub-ethnicity or dialect group, resulting in some larger estates having up to six temples.
Groups of incoming labourers each planted their culture in the estates, bringing their own festivals and celebrations. A common deep-rooted tradition was to bring sand and soil from their home village temples to construct the foundations or pedestals upon which the deities they worshipped were consecrated.
That is why Tamils are deeply emotional and sensitive about their places of worship. When temples and deities are destroyed or removed, their very basis of existence is perceived to be under attack.
Many temples were built to protect them in this strange new land. They were known as Kaval Deivams – guardian deities. There were specifically prescribed ways to install deities in temples and equally specific rituals governing their relocation.
Temple destroyers are considered to be committing an unpardonable sin.
Those temples built on estates were not illegal. They were established with the consent of the estate owners – the orang puteh who had obtained the land from the Sultans with the support of the British Resident or adviser. They were perfectly legal and above board under the administration of the time.
No migrant would have been brave enough to build one without permission. Alongside the temples came toddy shops and other micro-businesses serving the labourers’ cultural needs.
Many of these plantation communities existed in relative isolation, sometimes surrounded by jungle, living as self-contained settlements supported logistically by employers who had every interest in maintaining a stable and productive workforce.
So these century-old estate temples were not ‘tanpa izin’. They had the permission of their respective “lords of the land” – a form of customary tenure not unlike what Malay kampungs, together with their mosques and suraus, enjoyed before the advent of the Malay Reservation Enactment, which itself emerged from that era.
Even after independence, many of these estates continued to be owned by British companies such as Guthrie, Harrisons & Crosfield, and Sime Darby, operating under Malaysian law, and the labour lines and temples remained as they were.
New planning and building control laws enacted by Parliament, such as the Streets, Drainage and Buildings Act 1974 and the Town and Country Planning Act 1976, were never applied retroactively to temples or mosques unless major renovations or extensions took place.
How then do old temples differ from old mosques in this regard?
As the years passed, the Malaysian government, through Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB), moved to reclaim the plantation sector from foreign ownership, beginning in 1981 with the legendary Dawn Raid on Guthrie on the London Stock Exchange. It signalled the beginning of the rapid Malaysianisation of the plantation sector, largely completed by 1990.
We now turn our attention to land ownership. What happened to estate lands after Malaysianisation?
In simple terms, nothing changed except the companies’ shareholders. Today, almost four decades later, it remains relatively common to find temples within SD Guthrie estates that are fully functional and maintain daily prayer (puja) schedules.
However, as estates were transformed into townships, many of these temples risked becoming illegal unless they were regularised through integration into the new landscape via planning approval and building plan submissions. There was also the matter of compliance with the National Land Code during these land-use transformations.
The colonial masters had granted consent at the outset, and subsequent estate owners, including government-linked companies, continued to accommodate the temples on their land, often as a sound business decision.
Who, then, should take responsibility to ensure these temples do not suddenly become tanpa izin? I am speaking here of something beyond the legal.
Simple morality points towards the financially benefiting parties – the plantation company divesting the land for profit and/or the developer converting it into saleable property.
Such concepts are reflected in the continuing maturation of our legal framework, for example through the 2017 amendment to the Town and Country Planning Act, which seeks to formalise and strengthen Social Impact Assessment (SIA) as a development control tool.
At this point, it must also be acknowledged that some temple claimants are guilty of exaggerating historical tenure, and this too is something that SIA should address through objective data collection and rigorous stakeholder engagement.
Due attention must be given to regularising these legacy temples if hard evidence and prevailing policies, such as the National Unity Policy, support such action. Rationalisation – consolidating several temples into a single site – must also be considered.
Meanwhile, on the National Land Code aspect, appropriate provisions already exist for temple land to be surrendered to the state and gazetted as a religious reserve for public purposes.
This is my interpretation of temples whose origins are tied to plantations, which represent the majority of Hindu temples in Malaysia. The issue of tanpa izin would not have arisen at all had the authorities done the right thing.
Many temples that appear to have fallen into this limbo are entirely salvageable through corrective action, even if undertaken retrospectively.
Nevertheless, there are many temples whose origins are unrelated to plantations. The Masjid India temple was one such example.
Some are located on privately owned land but were constructed tanpa izin. Others may not possess formal title but obtained tenure through other means.
Look out for Part 2, where the writer focuses on how to deal with this mixed bag of temple origins.
The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the writer and do not represent that of Twentytwo13.