By Lim Teck Ghee
The current temple controversy is, in some ways, the tip of the iceberg of marginalisation issues that poor ethnic Tamils and other Indians face in Malaysia today.
Young Malaysians, and apparently most of our bureaucracy, are mostly unaware of the important role that the Indian community has played in the socio-economic development of the country.
Our Tamil, predominantly Hindu, community (and other subethnic groups such as the Telegu) was the backbone of colonial Malaya’s plantation economy, entrapped in poverty. The profits from their labour went to the British and Malayan treasury, with the latter being a key source of the current prosperity we enjoy.
The truth about our colonial legacy
The railways, roads, public buildings, educational and health services, and even the present civil service and other supportive physical and social infrastructure that we enjoy and take for granted today were borne out of the blood and sweat of workers in the plantation and tin mining industries.
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This needs to be emphasised not only in official history books but also to bring a balanced perspective to any discussion about the colonial past and who were exploited and marginalised during our recent history.
Fast forward to the post-independence period, and we have seen the eviction of several hundred thousand Tamil and other Indian workers, with meagre compensation for their lifetime labour in the plantations.
The majority of evicted Indian workers have had to move into our cities and small towns as the nation’s agricultural and post-colonial land development programmes discriminated against providing access to what was indisputably a deserving and priority agricultural community that would bring added value to Felda, Felcra, Risda and the many other state land development schemes following independence.
If the facts and figures about land access for the different communities in the country were made available, it would probably identify the Tamil community as the most marginalised and disadvantaged.
‘Squatting’ and settling in unsanctioned and often unused plots, displaced Tamil and other Indian workers have had to scratch a living from low-paying employment whilst competing with the mostly ‘illegal’ but apparently officially approved influx of several million migrant workers and their families.
Despite their poverty, they have continued to keep faith in their future by rebuilding the modest plantation temples they had earlier worshiped in but have had to leave behind.
Although the Dewi Sri Pathrakaliamman temple is of much longer heritage, there are many similar younger Hindu temples facing the same dilemma.
The larger historical context of the trials and tribulations that Indian plantation workers have had to face and overcome has been missing in most official narratives, as well as in policymaking and implementation.
Here, we can see that the current temple controversy is, in some ways, the tip of the iceberg of marginalisation issues that poor Tamil and other Indians face in Malaysia today.
Policy reform necessary to assist poor indians
A beginning to correct the historical injustices and bring poor and deserving Indians, especially the younger generation, into the mainstream of the country’s development and prosperity is long overdue.
This beginning can be provided by Budget 2026 and continue into the next Malaysia plan.
Many years ago, the British colonial government in Malaya was accused of treating the Indians like oranges, sucked up and spat out as pips; today, our own government must be asked to explain why there seems to be little change in policy towards them. – Malaysiakini
Lim Teck Ghee is an economic historian, analyst and former senior official with the UN and the World Bank.
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