Introduction

Exogamous marriages are a common phenomenon in Sarawak, which has 27 different ethnic groups. Sarawak has a population of 2,071,506, and the Iban forms the majority with a population of 603,735, the Chinese 537,230, the Malays, 462,270, the Bidayuh, 180,753, the Melanau, 112,984, and other indigenous groups number 117,696. Sarawak Indians belong to the minority group with a population of 3,851 people (Department of Statistics Sarawak 2008). The Indians in Kuching are currently second, third and fourth-generation descendants of Indian immigrants who came in the 1900s to work as labourers for the Public Works Department in Kuching, tea and coffee planters for the White Rajah administration (1841-1946) and later the colonial ad- ministration (1946-1963). Therefore, the early Indian settlements were located at the foot of Gunung Serapi (Mount Serapi) in Matang. Due to their small numbers, the early Indian groups such as the Telegus (99 people) in Kuching have married outside of their own linguistic group. However, some have also married Dayaks (David & Dealwis 2006). An interview conducted with an elderly Malayalee, Sarojini Narayanan, in June 2008 revealed that Malayalees in Kuching speak Tamil at home due to their mixed marriages with the more dominant Tamils. Some Malayalees speak Bidayuh and Malay because they have married Bidayuh women. Besides the city of Kuching, Indians are also found in the urban areas of Miri and Sibu, but the numbers are relatively smaller.

The Dayak Bidayuhs are among the original inhabitants of Sarawak and have been described by foreign and local writers as ‘shy and unwel- coming to strangers’ (Low, 1990; Beccari, 1982; Brooke, 1990). The early contacts with outsiders were with the warring Ibans who captured them and destroyed many of their villages (Chang, 2002). Today, the Bidayuhs are basically rural people and most of them are found in the Bidayuh Belt – a term used by Dundon (1989) to refer to Bidayuh areas such as Lundu, Serian, Bau and Padawan in the Kuching Division. According to Minos (2000), from the 1980s the Bidayuhs began coming to major towns and the city of Kuching in order to look for better jobs, higher education and a modern lifestyle.