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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
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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
J. NORMAN PARMER
Trinity University
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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