Dialogue  July - September, 2003 , Volume 5  No. 1

Indian Communities in South East Asia
V. Suryanarayan

She (India) is very loveable and none of her children can forget her wherever they go and whatever strange fate befalls them. For she is part of them in her greatness as well as in her failings.

Jawaharlal Nehru

Over 20 million of you have set up homes in scores of countries, near and far. But each one of you shares a common identity – your Indianness - and a common origin – this motherland of your forefathers. Therefore, this great gathering, which is the first of its kind, is truly a homecoming.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Inaugurating the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas celebrations in January 2003, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee remarked: “The success of every category of these emigrants all over the world testifies to the indomitable spirit, which they carried from Indian soil. It is a tribute to their patience and forbearance in the face of hardship, rebuke and denial. It speaks of their dedication to their chosen professions, overcoming various trials and tribulations”. Attended by large number of delegates from several countries, the Convention provided an opportunity for the Government of India and the participants to analyse the problems and prospects of over twenty million people of Indian origin spread over 136 countries in the world.

Last year, the High Level Committee on the Indian diaspora headed by the well-known Lawyer-Diplomat L.M. Singhvi to study the entire range of issues concerning the Indian communities living abroad had submitted its report. The Report has made recommendations on a variety of issues ranging from dual citizenship, cultural contacts, economic development, health, education, science and technology and promotion of tourism.

Semantic Confusion

Being an Indian outside India has several complex facets. Political Sociologists generally use the term “Overseas Indians” to refer to these people. The term is unsatisfactory and has serious limitations. The overwhelming majority, living in the Third World, belongs to the third or fourth generation. They have become a permanent feature of the demographic profile of these countries. They would like to be counted, for example, as Malaysians, Singaporeans or South Africans rather then “Overseas Indians”. The term does injustice to these people, because the implication is that they are only an “extension” of the people of India. The Indians, like the Chinese, are slowly, but surely emerging as distinct communities, linked with their homeland with certain cultural affinities, but also different in many respects from these societies. Cultural persistence – retaining many aspects of their culture in an alien environment – and adaptation to new surroundings are twin facets of this dynamic change.

Equally unsatisfactory is the term “diaspora”, which is today commonly used for the Indians and the Chinese settled abroad. Even the Singhvi Committee unfortunately uses this term. The term is Jewish in origin and does not exactly convey the complexities of these people. “Diaspora” was used to refer to the Jewish communities “living in exile outside of Palestine” consequent to the seizure of their homeland by external powers. The Jews were subjected to persecution and they fanned out to different parts of the world. But throughout centuries they hankered for their homeland. There was a special relationship between the land of Israel and the Jewish people. However, if one analyses the spread of Indians and Chinese abroad, there were several “pull” and “push” factors. And majority of them would not like to permanently return to China or India.

Another caveat is necessary. The media and sometimes even the Government of India uses the term non-resident Indians to encompass all Indians settled abroad. But in terms of their legal status, there are important variations. They could be categorized into three groups:
(1) People of Indian origin who have become citizens of the countries in which they have settled. (2) All those Indians, who have neither taken Indian citizenship nor the citizenship of host countries. The problem of the “stateless people”, as this category is known, was a thorny issue in India’s bilateral relations with several countries in the years immediately following independence. The problem still haunts the Indian community in Myanmar. (3) Indian citizens, who have gone abroad for specific purposes. The Indians working in the Gulf countries belong to this category. They are non-resident Indians.

The Indian communities abroad are not a homogenous group. They are divided on the basis of their religion – Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh – and on the basis of their language – Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, Bengali, Urdu etc. In Malaysia and Singapore, the term Indians encompasses Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Nepalis and Sri Lankans.

It would be simplistic and naïve to assume that the problems that these people face and what the future holds for them are identical. Their problems are intertwined with the nature of their migration, their social and economic status, the size of the community, educational attainments and the majority-minority syndrome in the countries in which they have settled. In some countries like South Africa and Southern Rhodesia, they were, until very recently, subjected to varying forms of discrimination; in Mauritius, Guyana, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Trinidad, they share political power; in Fiji, though they were the majority community, they have been effectively deprived of political power; and nearer home in Sri Lanka, the people of Indian origin were converted into a merchandise, to be divided between India and Sri Lanka in the name of “good neighbourly relations”.

Though the people of Indian origin are scattered in 136 countries, they are concentrated in a few regions. To put it in a nutshell – they number 2.5 million in United States and Canada; 2.5 million in the Gulf region; 4.5 million in Southeast Asia; 2.0 million in Britain and Europe; 2.0 million in Africa and 1.5 million in the Caribbean.

Cycles of Migration

The movement of Indians abroad, in historical and chronological terms, can be divided into four sequential phases. The first phase, which began in the first century AD with the migration of Indian princes, priests, poets and artisans triggered off cultural efflorescence in Southeast Asian countries. Angkor Wat, Lara Djonggrang and Borobudur stand testimony to the benign cultural interaction between India and Southeast Asian countries. Indian historians, with pardonable exaggeration, refer to the transmission of Indian cultural forms as an integral part of the making of “Greater India”. The famous lines of Rabindranath Tagore comes to my mind:

In a dim distant unrecorded age

we had met, thou and I,

when my speech became tangled in thine

and my life in thy life.

From the heavens spoke to me two mighty voices

the one that sung of Rama’s glory of sorrow

and the other Arjuna’s triumphant arm

urging me to bear along the waves

their epic lives in the eastern islands

and the heart of my land murmured to me its hope

that it might build its nest of love

in a far away land of its charm…

The second phase began with the growth of the maritime trade with Southeast Asia. Merchants from Gujarat, Bengal and Tamil Nadu settled down in the great port cities of Southeast Asia like Malacca, Acheh, Ternate and Tidor. They gradually assimilated with the local people. The Gujarati Muslim merchants, mainly subscribing to the Sufi variant of Islam, played an important role in the Islamisation of Malay peninsula and the Indonesian archipelago. The community, known as the Malacca Chettis, is the descendants of the Tamil Chettiars who went to Malay peninsula during the Malacca Sultanate. They have got assimilated with the Malay community, but they still retain some of the Hindu religious and cultural forms.

If one leaves aside this glorious chapter in the history of India, the contacts with the outside world, especially during the colonial period, had been accompanied by sorrow, misery and impoverishment. Imperialist domination made India the pivot of the British Empire and the vast reservoir of manpower were exploited to serve the colonial interests of Britain. Large army of labourers, clerks, soldiers and traders migrated to different parts of the Empire to serve the politico-economic interests of Britain. Few moneylenders and educated people also went to these countries on their own initiative.

The “coolies” who constituted the overwhelming majority of the population in the countries mentioned above were subjected to push and pull factors. The grinding poverty at home, combined with regular famines, pushed them across the seas and the hope of eking out a decent living acted as a powerful pull factor. They were exploited and despised during the colonial era; what is more, when the British granted independence to the colonies, they left the future of these unfortunate people at the mercy of the ruling elite in newly independent countries.

The agony and suffering undergone by the coolies under the British Raj and the Planters Raj are innumerable. For example, the verdant carpet of green in the central parts of Sri Lanka, which has made that country, the veritable ”island paradise” was due to the sweat and agony of the Indian plantation workers. The rubber plantations in Malaya, the backbone of the Malayan economy and the sugar plantations in far-flung areas of the British Empire were again developed as a result of the exploitation of Indian workers. The Mauritian poet Vishwamitra Ganga Aashutosh has described how the Indian workers transformed, despite heavy odds, the economy of British colonies:

No gold did they find

underneath any stone they

touched and turned

yet

every stone they touched

into solid gold they turned.

The odyssey of Indian workers to different corners of the world had been a saga of courage and adventure. It is a tribute to their patience and forbearance in the face of hardship, rebuke and persecution that they produced some of the greatest leaders of these countries. The Making of the Mahatma took place in South Africa and his struggle against racial discrimination inspired a whole generation of nationalists in different parts of the world. Out of those freedom movements emerged great leaders like Dr. Cheddy Jagan of British Guyana; Seewoosagar Ramgoolam of Mauritius; Yusuff Dadoo and Monty Naicker of South Africa; Savumyamurthy Thondaman in Sri Lanka; Jegannath Lechuman of Surinam; Devan Nair in Singapore; Sambandan in Malaysia and many others. Through dint of hard work and education, children and grand children of these indentured workers have made a niche for themselves in their chosen professions. They include VS Naipual, Siddharth Ramphal, Aneerood Jegannath; Shivnaraine Chandra Pal, Datuk Samy Velu and Muthiah Muralitharan. As Prime Minister Vajpayee put it, “Few people who entered foreign lands can claim such a testimony”.

The post independent era witnessed another pattern of Indian migration. The economic expansion of Britain, coupled with the establishment of a welfare state, opened up opportunities for many qualified Indians in services, industry and the professions. The technological break through in the United States and Washington’s policy of attracting the best talents led to an exodus of highly qualified and educated people to the United States. Similarly the economic boom in West Asia in the 1970’s and 1980’s led to the migration of large number of Indians to West Asia. These countries lacked manpower and skills and since India was willing to supply both at competitive rates, many countries turned to India to meet a variety of needs.

The world outside attracted some of the best Indian brains and talents and given the competitive nature in the Western world, the Indians became more innovative and dynamic abroad than while they were in India. Few names deserve special mention. They include Amartya Sen and Jagdish Bhagwati; ECG Sudarsen and Dr. S. Chandrasekhar; Hargobind Khurana and Zubin Mehta; Kalpana Chawla and Fareed Zakaria. They have helped to change the image of India from a country that produced “hewers of wood and drawers of water” to a nation on the march throbbing with ideas, indomitable spirit and zest for glory.

Though the people of Indian origin are scattered in 136 countries, they are concentrated in few regions. To put it in a nutshell – they number 2.5 million in United States and Canada; 2.5 million in the Gulf region; 4.5 million in Southeast Asia; 2.0 million in Britain and Europe and 1.5 million in the Caribbean.

Southeast Asia – Fascinating Laboratory

Southeast Asia is a fascinating laboratory for a comparative study pf Indians and Chinese settled abroad. The Chinese presence in the region is substantial, 26.0 million, whereas the Indians are relatively small, 4.5 million. Except in Myanmar, Malaysia and Singapore where they constitute 5.0 per cent, 8.0 per cent and 7.0 per cent respectively, they are a microscopic minority in all other countries.

The difference between the Indians and the Chinese is clearly evident in the economic sphere. The economic achievements of the Chinese are out of all proportion to their numbers. According to National Review,” in Indonesia, the Chinese are less than 4.0 per cent of the population, but they have 75 per cent of the wealth. In Thailand, the Chinese represent 8 per cent of the population, but control 80 per cent of the wealth. The numbers are even more amazing in the Philippines, less than 2 per cent, but control 70 per cent of the wealth. Even in backward countries – Burma, Cambodia and Vietnam – Chinese entrepreneurs are behind the vast majority of private enterprises”. This is not to imply that all Chinese are billionaires, but most of the business tycoons are Chinese. Unfortunately the contributions of Indian minority groups to the economic transformation of Southeast Asian countries are negligible. Though the Indian Chettiars did play an important role in the economic life of Burma, Malaya and Vietnam in the colonial era, they brought back their savings to India and did not take roots in these countries. The Indians today own only 1.5 per cent Malaysia’s national wealth. And according to informed sources, the per capita income of a Singapore citizen of Indian origin is less than the national average.

In a region, well known for xenophobia, the ethnic tensions mainly revolve around relations between the indigenous majority and the Chinese minority groups. The Indians, miniscule in number, are not a factor in ethnic politics, except in Kuala Lumpur where Malay-Indian riots took place in early 2001. The culturally exclusive and economically powerful Chinese minorities have been subjected to vicious and savage attacks at regular intervals. The worst anti-Chinese riots took place