On 13 September 1935, Muthusamy, an Indian coolie from the Haron Estate, Klang, in British Malaya (henceforth Malaya), was charged with enticing away a married woman, Thavakka, who was a coolie and the wife of Rengasamy, another coolie at the same estate. During the trial, it was established that Rengasamy married Thavakka in India in 1927, just before they arrived in Malaya at the Haron Estate. In his statement, Rengasamy claimed that Muthusamy had begun taking his meals with the couple from August 1934, and in March 1935 the latter enticed Thavakka away from him. Muthusamy, on the contrary, claimed that during the previous year he had been depositing all his earnings with Rengasamy for safe keeping, and in March 1935, when he demanded the money back from Rengasamy, the latter offered his wife instead of the money. Furthermore, Muthusamy tried to establish that he had initially refused the offer, but upon the pleas and eagerness of Thavakka, he agreed, and they proceeded to an estate in Ipoh where they began to live as ‘husband and wife’. After hearing the case, the magistrate convicted Muthusamy and sentenced him to three years of rigorous imprisonment.

The investigation and verdict on the Muthusamy and Rengasamy case was covered in a number of local newspapers, as were most ‘enticement’ cases in Malaya. Such cases were not uncommon in transnational migrant labour communities in colonial plantation societies. Colonial administrators, while dealing with incidences of domestic trouble, kidnapping, crimes of passion and other misdemeanors often used stereotypical labels of ‘victim’ and ‘enticer’ to categorise colonised subjects, but stereotyping did not always prove helpful for either administrators or their subjects. The frequent recurrence of incidents involving acts of ‘wife enticement’3, sexual jealousy and partner or spouse desertion amongst immigrant Indian coolies in Malaya sparked intense debate amongst colonial administrators both in India and Malaya from 1900 to 1940. The discourses that arose in the wake of such incidents offer many clues about the nature of Indian coolie life in British Malaya, particularly the nature of intimate gender relations.

Due largely to the demographics of early Indian immigration, historical research on Indian coolies in Malaya has tended to focus on male immigrants and their work as coolies, kanganis and chettiars. This emphasis has resulted in complete silence regarding Indian coolie women or gender relations between coolie migrants within colonial plantation societies.