ScorpioCMS.com v4.6 http://www.littleindia.com/ http://www.littleindia.com/files.php?file= http://www.littleindia.com/ http://www.littleindia.com/nri/1781-indians-in-malaysia-an-alienated-community.html NRI Sat, 02 Jun 2007 12:14:00 -0400 NRI Sun, 17 Jun 2007 14:56:00 -0400 However, I would like to point out that the southern indians who first came to south east asia more than 2000 years ago have only themselves to blame.
Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Singapore and Malaysia were colonies of southern indian empires such as kalinga, chola, etc where culture, religion (hinduism, Buddhism), language, written script, etc were introduced.
Indians gave away their heritage and turned away from the colonies. When they did return as pawns and semi-slaves of european imperialists ie labourers, clerical, petty traders and/or dispensable security apparatus, the natives of the land just can no longer match the 20 decades of indian influences against the "new arrivals".
The new immigrants were a divided lot. Especially the 90% of Indians from Tamil Nadu had more caste subdivisions than the original aryan structure. Such distinctions and discriminations remain a key barrier an integration within themselves, let alone with brethren from other states in India or other ethnic groups in Malaysia or other parts of south east asia.
For instance, the main indian political party is named Malaysian Indian Congress. However due to the fact that more than 95% of its members are hindu tamils, its meetings are preceeded with hindu prayers and all discussions and presentations are done in the Tamil vernacular.
This alienates Indians of different origins eg punjabi sikhs, Hindu Sindhis, Kerala Malayees, Andhra Pradesh Telegus, Hindu & Muslim Gujaratis, Buddhists, etc
The starting point to address Indian issues in Malaysia would be within the Malaysian Indian Congress. If this entity could transform itself to represent Indians of all faith and walks, then we may say a phenomenal change in the]]> NRI Thu, 21 Jun 2007 00:17:16 -0400 NRI Sun, 25 Nov 2007 02:37:48 -0500 NRI Wed, 02 Jun 2010 00:52:47 -0400 NRI Tue, 12 Oct 2010 20:55:15 -0400 Little India