Malaysian Indians are a group of Malaysians largely descended from those who migrated from southern India during the British colonization of Malaya. Prior to British colonization, Tamils had been conspicuous in the archipelago much earlier, especially since the period of the powerful South India kingdom of the Cholas in the 11th century. By that time, Tamils were among the most important trading peoples of maritime.
There is evidence of the existence of Indianized kingdoms such as Gangga Negara, Old Kedah, Srivijaya since approximately 1500 years ago. Early contact between the kingdoms of Tamilakkam and the Malay peninsula had been very close during the regimes of the Pallava Kings (from the 4th to the 9th Century C.E.) and Chola kings (from the 9th to the 13th Century C.E.). The trade relations the Tamil merchants had with the ports of Malaya led to the emergence of Indianized kingdoms like Kadaram (Old Kedah) and Langkasugam.
Furthermore, Chola king Rajendra Chola I sent an expedition to Kadaram (Sri Vijaya) during the 11th century conquering that country on behalf of one of its rulers who sought his protection and to have established him on the throne. The Cholas had a powerful merchant and naval fleet in the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. Three kinds of craft are distinguished by the author of the Periplus – light coasting boats for local traffic, larger vessels of a more complicated structure and greater carrying capacity, and lastly the big ocean-going vessels that made the voyages to Malaya, Sumatra, and the Ganges.
A good number of Tamil inscriptions as well as Hindu and Buddhist icons emanating from South India have been found in Southeast Asia (and even in parts of south China). On the Malay Peninsula, inscriptions have been found at Takuapa, not far from the Vishnuite statues of Khao Phra Narai in Southern Thailand. It is a short inscription indicating that an artificial lake named Avani-naranam was dug by nangur-Udaiyan which is the name of an individual who possessed a military fief at Nangur, being famous for his abilities as a warrior, and that the lake was placed under the protection of the members of the Manikkiramam (which according to K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, was a merchant guild) living in the military camp.
An inscription dated 779 A.D. has been found in Ligor, Malaya peninsula. This refers to the trade relationship between the Tamil country and Malaya. In ancient Kedah there is an inscription found by Dr. Quaritch Wales. It is and inscribed stone bar, rectangular in shape, bears the ye-dharmma formula in South Indian characters of the fourth century A.D., thus proclaiming the Budhist character of the shrine near the find-spot of which only the basement survives. The inscriptions are on three faces in Pallava script, or Vatteluttu rounded writing of the sixth century A.D. In another area in Kedah there was another inscription found in Sanskrit dated 1086 A.D. has been found. This was left by Kulothunka Chola I (of the Chola empire, Tamil country). This too shows the commercial contacts the Chola Empire had with Malaya
All these inscriptions, both Tamil and Sanskrit ones, relate to the activities of the people and rulers of the Tamil country of South India. The Tamil inscriptions are at least 4 centuries posterior to the Sanskrit inscriptions, from which the early Tamils themselves were patronizers of the Sanskrit language.
The overwhelming majority of migrants from India were ethnic Tamil and from British Presidency of Madras. In 1947 they represented approximately 85 per cent of the total Indian population in Malaya and Singapore. Other South Indians, mainly Malayalees, formed a further 14 per cent in 1947, and the remainder of the Indian community was accounted for by North Indians, principally Punjabis, Bengalis, Gujaratis, and Sindhis.
British acquisition of Penang, Melaka and Singapore - the Straits Settlements from 1786 to 1824 started a steady inflow of Indian labourers, traders, sepoys and convicts engaged in construction, commercial agriculture, defence and commerce. But large scale migration of Indians from the subcontinent to Malaysia followed the extension of British formal rule to the West coast Malay states from the 1870s onwards as British brought the Indians as workers to work in the rubber plantations.
The Indian population in pre-independent Malaya and Singapore was predominantly adult males who were single with family back in India and Sri Lanka. Hence the population fluctuated frequently with the immigration and exodus of people. As early as 1901 the Indian population in the Straits Settlements and the Federated Malay States was approximately 120,000. By 1931 there were 640,000 Indians in Malaya and Singapore and interestingly they even outnumbered the native Malays in the state of Selangor that year.
The population was virtually stagnant until 1947 due to many leaving for Burma during the Japanese occupation as recruits for the Indian National Army and "Indentured Japanese labors" for the Death Railway.' At the time of Independence in 1957 it stood at a little over 820,000. In this last year Indians accounted for approximately 8 to 12 per cent of the total population of Malaysia (in the range 1.8 to 2.5 million) and 8 per cent in Singapore (250,000). There has also been a significant influx of Indian nationals into Singapore and Malaysia in recent years to work in construction, engineering, restaurants, IT and finance with many taking up permanent residence in Singapore where they account for nearly a quarter of the Indian population.
A vast majority of people from the Indian sub-continent brought over were the Tamils. They were predominantly estate workers, the majority being employed on rubber estates, though a significant minority worked in Government public works departments. The North Indians, with the exception of the Sikhs, were mainly merchants and businessmen. For example, the Gujaratis and Sindhis owned some of the most important textile firms in Malaya and Singapore. The Sikhs were either in the police or employed as watchmen.
The close correspondence between the ethnic and occupational divisions of the South Asian community was inevitably reflected in the community's geographical distribution in Malaya. The South Indian Tamils were concentrated mainly in Perak, Selangor, and Negri Sembilan, on the rubber estates and railways, though a significant proportion found employment on the docks in Penang and Singapore. The Malayalees were located predominantly in Lower Perak, Kuala Lumpur, parts of Negri Sembilan, and Johore Bahru, while the business communities, the Gujaratis, Sindhis, Chettiars, and Tamil Muslims, were concentrated in the urban areas, principally Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Ipoh, and Singapore. The Ceylon Tamils were also mainly an urban community, though some were found in rural areas working as staff on the estates.
Hinduism and Buddhism has been in existence in the Malay Peninsula dating from the second century A.D. Indianized kingdoms such as Kadaram (Old Kedah), and Ilangosagam (Langkasuka) have practiced Hinduism and Buddhism during the rule of the Malay-Sri Vijaya and Tamil-Chola kingdoms. Islam found its way to the Malayan Peninsula as well as the Archipelago of Indonesia not from Arabia, but from southern India, specifically, Tamil Country. The early Tamils married into leading Indonesian families and brought Hindu ideas of kingship, just as more than a thousand years later the Tamil Muslims married into the families of the Sultans and Bendaharas of Malacca.
Trade contacts between the Tamils and Arabs & between the Tamils and East Indies antedate the Islamic period (circa 570-632 A.D.), or the birth of Islam. Indonesians and Malays came to know about Islam through the Muslim merchants of south India and not through Arab missionaries. Furthermore Islam had reached South India, particularly Tamil country in the 8th century A.D., while the state of Gujurat received Islam during the early 14th century, as a result of the invasion of the Delhi sultanate. Muslim traders of the Coromandel Coast are said to have been even politically influential in historical Malaya. In 1445 A.D. Tamil Muslim traders staged a coup at Malacca, installing a sultan of their choice. During the coming of Islam to Malaysia was the early decline of Hinduism and Buddhism.
The practice of Hinduism began to rise during the second wave of people from the Indian subcontinent during British rule. Hinduism is the most practised religion amongst the Tamils comprising of the both the major Hindu and Tamil pantheon of deities. Both Tamils of Indian and Sri Lankan backgrounds practice Hinduism. Amongst the North Indians are the Gujarati, Sindhi, Bengali, and Punjabi Hindus.
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