Review

Reviewed Work(s): The Indian Minority and Political Change in Malaya, 1945-1957. by
Rajeswary Ampalavanar
Review by: J. Norman Parmer
Source: The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Feb., 1985), pp. 452-453
Published by: Association for Asian Studies
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2055990
Accessed: 07-04-2020 06:40 UTC

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 452 JOURNAL OF ASIAN STUDIES

SOUTHEAST ASIA

The Indian Minority and Political Change in Malaya, 1945- 1957. By RAJESWARY
AMPALAVANAR. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1981. xvi, 260 pp.
Glossary, Select Bibliography, List of Persons Interviewed, Index. $34.50.

The many scholarly studies on Malaysia which have been published in recent years
have not neglected Malaysia's Indian community. Kernial Singh Sandhu, S. Ara-
saratnam, R. K. Jain, M. R. Stenson, Anthony Short, Richard Clutterbuck, and
others have written on Malaysia's Indians, either alone or with colleagues in collec-
tions of essays. None have dealt fully or directly, however, with the Indian community
during the years between the end of the Japanese Occupation and the attainment of
independence in 1957, perhaps the most complex and formative period in Malaysia's
modern history. Scholars, especially Malaysians, intrigued by the "watershed" charac-
ter of this period have increasingly subjected it to scrutiny. The book under review is a
study of the Indian community between 1945 and 1957 as well as a contribution to
our general knowledge of those years.
Packed with interesting and useful information, some readers will find the book
all too brief. It consists of seven chapters and a conclusion, well over one thousand
footnotes, a lengthy bibliography, a glossary, and biographical sketches of many Indian
leaders. Chapters are arranged topically rather than chronologically and include such
subjects as Indian nationalism in Malaya, Indian responses to Malaysian constitutional
changes, factionalism among Malaysian Indians, and the Malayan Indian Congress
(MIC) relationships with the Alliance, the partnership between the United Malays
National Organization (UMNO) and the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA), first
formed in 1952. The research in both primary and secondary sources has been
exhaustive. Rajeswary Ampalavanar writes with a clear, direct, and readable style; the
book is a revision of the author's doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of
London.
A major theme is the need of Malayan Indians to adjust their political attitudes,
loyalties, and tactics over a decade or so of very rapid and fundamental political and
constitutional change and to do so as a minority community in a plural society.
Community-wide adjustment did not occur because Indians were sorely divided by
language, religion, caste, education, occupation, degree of political awareness, and
other factors.
Of special interest is Ampalavanar's treatment of Tamil-speaking Indians, who
constitute the majority of Malaya's Indian population. Most of them were poorly
educated and lowly paid, and the economic dislocations of the Occupation and its
aftermath brought them great hardship. In addition there appeared a Tamil
chauvinism, which expressed itself in such organizations as Thondar Padai (Youth
Organization) and contributed much to the militancy and class consciousness of Tamil
workers. Under these circumstances the Chinese-dominated Malayan Communist
party (MCP), says the author, was briefly successful in recruiting Indian laborers.
However, the MCP shift to armed rebellion in 1948, coupled with the subsequent
emergence of an essentially nonpolitical union movement, resulted in the loss of
support by the Indian workers for the MCP
Malayan Indians, in spite of their lack of unity, provided Malaya with number of
prominent and active political leaders in the years 1945-1952. These leaders some-
times expressed support for the concept of a Malay as opposed to a Malayan sover-
eignty and favored a democratic political system, a socialist economy, and a

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 BOOK REVIEWS-SOUTHEAST ASIA 453

noncommunal approach to politics. However, as constitutional reforms expanded

electorates and communal politics became the practice after 1952, Indian political
leaders began to fade into the background. Indian efforts in support of such parties as
the Independence of Malaya Party and the Labour Party of Malaya were not very
successful. Indian leaders, or at least some of them, had the sense that history was
passing them by, that crucial decisions about Malaysia's future were being made with-
out Indian participation. With federal elections on the horizon, the Malayan Indian
Congress in 1954 abandoned its noncommunal advocacy and petitioned for the
reservation of seats for Indians in the federal legislature. Unsuccessful in this effort,
the MIC then sought partnership in the conservative, communally based Alliance.
The MIC was only formally accepted into the Alliance in 1955 after it had proven it
could help Alliance candidates win in local elections.
The author concludes that the most striking feature about the Indian community
between 1945 and 1957 was its divisiveness. As a result, the Indians were largely
ignored, first by the British and later by the Alliance. The author suggests that the
Indians did not forge a political unity because even if united they were still too few
(some 11 percent of the combined populations of Malaya and Singapore in 1957) to
bargain effectively and to make much of a difference. Perhaps, but it might also be
argued that the divisions were too old, too deep, too many, and too culturally rooted
to be overcome in the short time available, especially when the initiatives for change
and the pacing of political reforms lay outside the Indian community.
The book could have been enhanced by the application of theoretical perspectives
and by the inclusion of one or more tables providing statistical profiles of Malaysian
Indians. But the study as it stands is well done and constitutes an important contri-
bution to Malaysian history and politics.

J. NORMAN PARMER
Trinity University

A History of Malaysia. By BARBARA WATSON ANDAYA and LEONARD Y ANDAYA.

New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982. xxi 350 pp. Maps, Notes and Further
Reading, Glossary, Index. $30.

Any historian setting out to write a history of "Malaysia" faces the problem of
defining terms and delimiting territory. Properly speaking, the nation-state of Malay-
sia has only been in existence since 1964. It does not include Singapore, Riau, or
Palembang, all of which were former centers of the Malay states that the Malays claim
as their predecessors. At the same time, Malaysia does include the Bornean territo-
ries of Sabah and Sarawak, which were never part of those former states. The capital,
Kuala Lumpur, is not only not a traditional Malay center, but it was founded as a
Chinese tin-mining town in the nineteenth century. Ethnic Malays today make up less
than 50 percent of the population. The state as it currently exists owes more to the
vagaries of colonialism that it does to the aspirations of the indigenous and resident
populations.
The task of making historical sense of the present nation and its antecedents is
thus a tricky one. The path is full of contradictions and digressions. Worse yet is the
absence of a viable model to follow. The job has usually been done by colonial
servants, and what has passed as the general history of Malaysia or Malaya has been
outstanding for bureaucratic tedium, pedantry, and provincialism. There has likewise
been no serious attempt to update Malaysia's history since the founding of the state.
In the meantime, the graduate schools of Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, the United

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