Background to the setting

Among the three main ethnic groups in Malaysia (the Malays, Chinese and Indians), Malaysian Indians are considered a minority. Despite being the majority minority, the Malaysian Indians have little political clout, and as a community they have increasingly little or no influence on public policy decision making (Appudurai & Dass 2008). The Indian migrants were brought into Malaya either as “labour” or “non-labour”. The “labour” migrants were mainly from South India and the “non-labour” migrants – known as the “literate” Indians (including Sikhs) – came from Ceylon, South India and North India to mainly man the administrative, technical, defense and security services (ibid.).

The spoken language of the great majority of Malaysian Indians is Tamil; this is a legacy from the earlier stages of the Indian connection with Southeast Asia, which was predominantly South Indian, and more specifically Tamil. The popular cults of Hinduism practiced in Malaysia are the same as those followed in Tamil Nadu, while social values and the role of the family follow traditional Tamil patterns (Tate 2008: 14).

The working class (“labourers”), having lived in the estate, send their children to Tamil schools for their primary education. This move was to maintain the need for the mother tongue, which gives them their identity and cultural values (Poon 2009). However, this can be problematic, as the move on to national secondary school is often an arduous experience for Tamil school students due to their lack of language proficiency in Malay and English (Appudurai & Dass 2008). All national secondary schools use Malay as primary medium and English as the second language.

In order to gain economic mileage/empowerment, the middle class (“non-labour”) Malaysian Indians have opted to send their children to Malay or English medium schools (Appudurai & Dass 2008 and Tate 2008). Their English education gave them access to, and contact with, colonial circles which put them on a plane above the rest (Tate 2008). Those who are educated in English or Malay are unable to even recognise the Tamil alphabet, as little emphasis is given in national schools to studying the Tamil language. According to A.J. Lent (1974), the readership of Tamil newspapers among Indians has fallen because fewer Indians are going to Tamil schools or learning Tamil in national schools.