A Subaltern History of the Indian Diaspora in Singapore

The Gradual Disappearance of Untouchability 1872-1965

John Solomon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780367875237
• eBook ISBN: 9781317353805
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Ethnische Studien

Untouchable migrants made up a substantial proportion of Indian labour migration into Singapore in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. During this period, they were subject to forms of caste prejudice and discrimination that powerfully reinforced their identities as untouchables overseas. Today, however, untouchability has disappeared from the public sphere and has been replaced by other notions of identity, leaving unanswered questions as to how and when this occurred. The untouchable migrant is also largely absent from popular narratives of the past.

This book takes the "disappearance" as a starting point to examine a history of untouchable migration amongst Indians who arrived in Singapore from its modern founding as a British colony in the early nineteenth century through to its independence in 1965. Using oral history records, archival sources, colonial ethnography, newspapers and interviews, this book examines the lives of untouchable migrants through their everyday experience in an overseas multi-ethnic environment. It examines how these migrants who in many ways occupied the bottom rungs of their communities and colonial society, framed transnational issues of identity and social justice in relation to their experiences within the broader Indian diaspora in Singapore. The book trances the manner in which untouchable identities evolved and then receded in response to the dramatic social changes brought about by colonialism, war and post-colonial nationhood.

By focusing on a subaltern group from the past, this study provides an alternative history of Indian migration to Singapore and a different perspective on the cultural conversations that have taken place between India and Singapore for much of the island's modern history.

1 Indian labour migration and caste

Policies, discourse and social effects from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries

Singapore in the early nineteenth century was a pioneer society, characterised by a transient outlook and freer and more open cultural interactions between migrants of different ethnic communities and classes. During this period, caste practice was characterised by considerable flexibility. Both Rajesh Rai and Fred Clothey use temple records and evidence from shrines and religious structures to argue that this period was characterised by cultural laxity and compromise.¹ Rai suggests that the makeshift quality and admixture of regional traditions cobbled together in shrines and temples imply that religious arrangements in Singapore were viewed as temporary compromises. Rai further argues that the pragmatic needs in the colony made cooperation between different Hindus necessary, and that caste and regional differences were temporarily set aside.²

Caste still mattered to Indian migrants – most were temporary entrants and remained psychologically oriented towards India and inclined towards the maintenance of cultural continuities. Caste identity would have retained significance for transient merchant communities such as the Chettiars, for instance, who usually returned to India for marriage after spending a number of years on the island. However, the Indian community remained relatively small and diverse in the early half of the nineteenth century. Lacking was a critical mass of individuals from the same regions of India, or of enclaves where public practices of caste could be actively policed or institutionalised.

Some European writers in Malaya at the time noted the private nature of caste observance during this earlier period.³ J.T. Thomson noted that his accountant in Penang, Ramasamy Pillai, was proud of his high caste status, and recounted the efforts that Ramasamy would go through to obtain food that was permissible according to his caste rules from his brother’s wife:

Ramasamy’s brother’s house was at Sungei Puyoh, a distance of five miles, and the way to it was through scrub infested with robbers and wild animals; yet did this lonely Hindoo trudge over the distance morning and evening, after the labours of the day, and during the dark, guarded only by a long dirk, which he clutched in his right hand, ready for defence.⁴

In Thomson’s account Ramasamy is presented as an extremely caste-conscious individual who is proud of the “caste-marks” on his forehead and eats in private, mirroring traditional Brahmanical caste protocols.⁵ Yet he is also presented as an object of ridicule amongst others who belittle his caste rules or are angered by his high-handedness.⁶ Ramasamy is presented as an isolated figure, forced to compartmentalise his religious identity and relegate his caste observances to the private sphere. His respect for caste rules is reinforced by the proximity of close family members, but the other non-Hindus who surround him do not recognise his caste status. Thomson noted that this was the price Ramasamy paid to reside in a land where “his customs were not respected, nor his laws enforced”.⁷

In the absence of rigid religious institutions and relationships of dependency, religious claims to authority and status would have been tenuous for those who were not directly involved in priestly duties or did not contribute funds for shrines, temples and festivals. Furthermore, there would not have been many mechanisms to enforce caste performativity, since many migrants were not in relationships of financial dependency or social subservience to other groups of Indians. Divisions between different groups of Indians from various religious and ethnic communities were also less fixed before an increase in Indian immigrant numbers saw the introduction of more rigid boundaries.⁸ The sense of expanded community that accompanied weakened boundaries would no doubt also have widened the range of identity resources available to Hindus from traditionally low positions in their original communities.

From the 1870s, however, the situation began to change. Tamils began to enter Singapore and other parts of Malaya in great numbers as menial labourers, the majority working in plantations and as municipal workers in urban centres. The entry of these labourers fundamentally changed the character of Indian society in Malaya and their arrival saw the beginning of a period during which caste attitudes amongst Hindus in Singapore were strengthened. Not only were public practices associated with untouchability established, but low-caste and untouchable Tamils also became a salient and highly visible category of migrant.

During this period colonial authorities vigorously debated many aspects of Indian labour migration. In an effort to facilitate, stem or influence the character of labour migration, governments, planters and other parties argued about the cultural effects of migration, the conditions faced by labour migrants and the characteristics of the ideal migrant. The resulting discourses that evolved from these debates were often focused on the issue of caste as a social practice and as an identity marker amongst migrants. In this chapter I analyse these discourses to first argue that untouchables comprised a significant proportion of early Tamil labour migration into Malaya. Although many scholarly studies have alluded to the high numbers of untouchable immigrants who arrived during this period, not much evidence has been presented to support these claims. This instability has created an opening for individuals and interest groups either to deny that untouchables arrived in significant numbers, or to downplay the discomfiting significance of caste in the region’s past.⁹ It is important not only to demonstrate that untouchables arrived in high numbers but to understand the factors that led to these groups undertaking overseas migration. Being a particularly vulnerable social group, untouchables were amongst the first Tamils to travel to Malaya for labour during periods of famine and hardship in India. Early untouchable migrants faced difficult conditions in Malaya, and the authorities used the low caste identities of migrants to attribute the high rates of debilitations and death to the essential physical constitutions of migrants rather than the inadequacy of protective legislation.

Many of the discourses that surrounded Indian labour migration into Malaya featured the belief that the overseas journey led to the erosion of caste identity. In this chapter I explore the context behind these assumptions and probe the degree to which migration destabilised caste. By examining a common feature of the labour recruitment system in Malaya, the kangany system, the chapter examines how structural factors created spaces in which Hindu Tamil migrants were able to reassert caste hierarchies and values, against the destabilising pressures of wage labour and uniform occupational conditions. In contrast to the passive and malleable Indian migrant of prevailing colonial discourse, whose caste consciousness was highly susceptible to the influence of overarching policy, migrants adapted to the overseas environment and contested issues of caste, asserting or challenging their traditional roles within the caste system.

Immigration trends, Indian labour welfare and governmental differences

The reinforcement of strong cultural continuities between India and Singapore via the mechanism of caste was accompanied by great changes in the nature of Indian labour migration to Singapore, and significant demographic and cultural changes to the Indian immigrant population. Indentured and free labourers had migrated in relatively small numbers since the 1830s, but began to come to Malaya in much greater numbers from the mid-1870s. This led to the expansion and demographic evolution of the Indian community, which shifted from having a Muslim majority towards becoming increasingly more Hindu in character.¹⁰ Just as the abolition of slavery had facilitated the widespread implementation of indentured labour in British colonies from the early part of the nineteenth century, the end of penal transportation to Southeast Asia in the latter half of the nineteenth century created an acute labour shortage, necessitating new forms of labour migration to Singapore to meet the growing requirements of the colony. Following the end of penal transportation and the de-linking of the prison system from the Public Works Department of Singapore, the government of the Straits Settlements found it necessary to bring in large numbers of South Indian workers for municipal labour. Planting interests also intervened to apply pressure on the Straits Settlements government to meet the labour requirements of a burgeoning rubber industry.¹¹

The separation of the Straits Settlements from the government of India and the increased autonomy it gained as a Crown Colony in 1867 introduced a further divergence between the governmental interests of the Indian and Straits Settlements authorities, which complicated the process of migration between India and Malaya.¹² The often conflicting interests of both governments with regard to Indian labour migration was also accompanied by considerable public debate and pressure from missionaries, planters, Indian elites and other interest groups that had a stake in the politics, economics and social cons...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary of terms and abbreviations
• Introduction: a subaltern history of the Indian diaspora in Singapore: the gradual disappearance of untouchability
• 1 Indian labour migration and caste: policies, discourse and social effects from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries
• 2 Caste, untouchability and public practice in Singapore
• 3 Identity narratives and the beginnings of diasporic consciousness
• 4 Racialised subjectivities and the performance of “Indianness” in Malaya during the Japanese Occupation
• 5 The post-Dravidian era and Singaporean Tamil ethnicity
• Appendix
• Index