IDENTITY EVOLUTION IN A COMMUNITY:

THE GRADUAL DISAPPEARANCE OF UNTOUCHABILITY IN 1825-1965

JOHN SOLOMON

A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (History)

School of Humanities and Languages University of 2014

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! ! Abstract

Untouchable migrants made up a significant proportion of Indian labour migration into Singapore in the 19th and 20th centuries. During this period, they were subject to forms of caste prejudice that powerfully reinforced their identities as untouchables overseas. Today however, untouchability has disappeared from the public sphere, replaced by other notions of identity, leaving unanswered questions as to how and when this occurred. This study takes this “disappearance” as a starting point to examine a history of untouchable migration and identity negotiation in Singapore amongst Indians who arrived in Singapore between its modern founding as a British colony in the early 1800s through to its independence in 1965.

I argue that that practices of untouchability evolved in close relation to growth of translocal solidarities amongst migrants, their responses to life overseas in a plural colony, and the spread of transnational ideologies and movements. Untouchable identity was negotiated in relation to the development of competing Indian and Tamil identity discourses in Singapore during the colonial period, the Japanese Occupation of Malaya and the post-war period of decolonisation.

In this study I argue that caste identities amongst Tamil migrants were eventually replaced by a linguistically defined ethnic Tamil identity in the 1950s and 1960s that was shaped by the emergence of the in Singapore in the 1930s. This process intensified within the post-colonial logic of the emerging independent Singaporean state’s policies governing inter-racial relations.

! i! Acknowledgments

I would first like to thank my supervisor Kama Maclean for all her invaluable support and guidance and for being generous with her time throughout my candidature. I would also like to thank my co-supervisor Ursula Rao for her help, guidance and important feedback.

Various other academics gave me their time to discuss my research and offer valuable advice in their offices, at conferences, workshops and at various archives. In alphabetical order they are; Albert Lau, Anoma Pieris, A.R. Venkatachalapathy, Brij Lal, Charu Gupta, Clare Anderson, Dinesh Sathisan, Ernest Koh, Gnana Aloysius, Rajesh Rai, Robin Jeffry, Subramanian Thinnappan, Sugata Bose, Sunil Amrith and Vineeta Sinha.

Earlier versions of two sections in this present study have appeared in South Asia: The Journal of South Studies, and will appear in a published volume, The Pacific War: Aftermaths, Remembrance and Culture (Routledge: 2015). I would like to thank the editors and reviewers whose feedback on my work helped to inform the direction of these chapters. This project would not have been possible without the help of my interviewees who shared their memories with me with a candor, openness and hospitality that made the interviewing process one of the most enjoyable parts of my research.

I would like to thank my parents for instilling a love of learning in me from a young age and for their kind support and encouragement. My fiancé Anisha took time away from her own work to give me valuable feedback on my drafts. Thank you for your help, friendship and encouragement. My candidature was also made far more enjoyable by the friendship and company of other postgraduates like Eve.

Lastly, I extend my gratitude to UNSW for the opportunity to pursue this project full time with a University International Postgraduate Award and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences for additional funding.

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Dedicated to Guru. I will miss you always, old friend.

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Table of Contents Page Abstract i Acknowledgments ii Dedication iii Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations viii List of Images ix

Introduction 1

I.1 Why conduct a historical study of the Untouchable community? 3 I.2 Challenges to studying Untouchability in the Singaporean context 6 I.3 Scope 19 I.4 Who are the Untouchables in this study? 25 I.5 Sources 30 I.6 The Structure of the Study 35

Chapter One: Penal Transportation and Cultural Ruptures 41

1.1 Indian Transmarine Convicts and British Notions of Caste 43 1.2 Caste and Penal Policy in the Straits 48 1.3 The Convict Class System and the Allocation of Labour 49 1.4 Standardised Clothing 56 1.5 Reformative Labour Discourses: Implications on Policy and Identity 62 1.6 The Effects of Penal Culture on the Reintegration of Convicts 67 1.7 Liberal Legacies and the Changing Constitution of Indian Society 74

Chapter Two: Characteristics of Indian Labour Migration and the 76 Introduction of Caste Practice: Policies, Discourse and Social Effects from the Late 19th to the Early 20th Centuries

2.1 Immigration trends, Indian Labour Welfare and Governmental 77 Differences 2.2 Push Factors for Untouchable Labour Migrants 81

! iv! 2.3 Discourses on Indian Labour Migration, the Welfare of Indian 88 Labourers and the Retention of the Caste System 2.5 The Dialogical Shaping of Labour Recruitment: Policies and Culture 95 2.6 Different Systems of Labour Recruitment and Management and their 96 Effect on the Continuity of Cultural Practices Overseas 2.7 Tamil Labour: Discourse and Practice 109

Chapter Three: Caste, Untouchability and Public Practice in Singapore 111

3.1 Untouchability in Singapore: An Overview 111 3.2 The Translocal Sphere of Cultural Practice: Kinship Networks and the 118 Self- Policing of Caste 3.3 Networks and Identity 121 3.4 Demographic Trends and the Introduction of Caste Prejudice 126 3.5 Diversity in Caste Practice 130 3.6 Coffee Shops, Caste and Others 132 3.7 Caste and Occupation 135 3.8 Establishing Caste Practice 143 3.9 Caste and Class 144 3.10 The Persistence of Caste Consciousness 146

Chapter Four: Identity Narratives and the Beginnings of Diasporic 148 Consciousness

4.1 Widening Identities and Changing Outlooks 149 4.2 Indian and the Dravidian Movement in Malaya 153 4.3 Ideologies and Caste in 156 4.4 Social Reform in Malaya 164 4.5 The Indian Association in Singapore 170 4.6 Pan-Indianism and the Indian Association’s Increasing Identification 173 with the Congress Movement 4.7 The Social Programmes of the Indian Association 178 4.8 The Indian Association in Singapore and Tamil Hindu Conservatives 180 4.9 The Limited Success of the Indian Association’s Social Agenda 185

! v! 4.10 The Tamil Reform Association and Dravidian Ideology in Singapore 187 4.11 A Broadening World View 194

Chapter Five: Coercion and Consent: Racialised Subjectivities and the 196 Performance of “Indianness” in Malaya During the Japanese Occupation

5.1 Untouchables and a new Pan-Indianism 197 5.2 Indian Unity: Memorialising the Independence Movement in Occupied 199 Malaya 5.3 Diversity and Divisions within Malaya’s Indian Community 201 5.4 Managing Pluralism: The Japanese Encounter with Malayan Society 204 5.5 Racial Classification Under Occupation 206 5.6 Assessments of Indians in Malaya 209 5.7 Performing Indian Identity 211 5.8 Conditional Support and Pan-Indian Unity 213 5.9 The Appropriation of Indian National Congress Symbols 216 5.10 Tamil Nationalism and Tamil Separatist Tendencies 218 5.11 Other Communities 221 5.12 North Indian-Centric Racial Normativity 223 5.13 Untouchables during the Occupation 225 5.14 The Effects of the Occupation 235

Chapter Six: The Post-Dravidian Era and the Replacement of Untouchable 239 Subjectivities with Singaporean Tamil Ethnicity

6.1 Racial Policies and the Singaporean State 241 6.2 Tamil Reform and Tamil Ethnic Identity Assertion, 1948-1965 247 6.3 From Adi Dravidas to 255 6.4 Transnational Cultural Agendas, Localised Contexts 267 6.5 Contexts and Outcomes 278

! vi! Conclusion 281

C.1 Responses to Structural Conditions Overseas: Caste as a Register of 282 Migrant Agency C.2 Identity Orientations: Translocal Connections, Diasporic 284 Consciousness and Citizenship C.3 Identity Discourses and Ideology 286 C.4 Reflections and Areas for Future Study 287

Appendix 290 Bibliography 292

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! vii! Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations

Adi Dravida Sangam - A Tamil untouchable association BL - British Library Changkol - A Malay term for digging implement used in agriculture Cheri - An untouchable hamlet usually situated next to a caste- Hindu village. CIAM - Central Indian Association of Malaya CMIO - “Chinese, Malay, Indian and Other,” the unofficial term for a racial classification system used to govern racial difference in the Singaporean state. CPM - Communist Party of Malaya DK - Dravida Kazhagam DMK - Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam IA - Indian Association IIL - Indian Independence League INA - INC - Indian National Congress IOL - India Office Library IOR - India Office Records Jati - A sub-caste. Kangany - ATamil overseer and labour recruiter MIC - Malaysian Indian Congress NA (UK) - National Archives (UK) PAP - People’s Action Party NAS - National Archives of Singapore PWD - Public Works Department Rattan - A wooden cane used for corporal punishment SDK - Singapore Dravida Kazhagam SDMK - Singapore Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam SSG - Subaltern Studies Group TRA - Tamil Reform Association TRC - Tamil Reform Council Ur - A caste-Hindu village Varna - The general tiers of caste within which sub-castes are hierarchically organised.

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! viii! List of Images

Figure 1: Convicts in various types of uniform. Figure 2: An image of a convict prison in the . Figure 3: Tamil labourers and an overseer engaged in roadwork in Singapore in 1880. Figure 4: Public Cleansing Division employee in the Jalan Besar area in 1964. FigureA Public 5: Cleansing Division employee cleaning a drain in Lorong Lalat 1964. Figure 6: A copy of Munnetram. Figure 7: Cover pages from two copies of the . Figure 8: INA enlistees in Singapore in 1943. Figure 9: A staged photo of and C.N. Annadurai taken during the latter’s visit to Singapore in 1965. Figure 10: A 1958 poster for Valluvar Vizhar (Valluvar Festival). Figure 11: Members of the SDMK, celebrating National Day in Singapore in 1974 near the organisation’s central headquarters in Norris Road. Figure 12: The black and red logo of the SDMK, printed on an association document from 1961. Figure 13: A 1974 publication commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the re- named Singapore Tamilar Eyakkam ( Movement). Figure 14: The leadership of the Singapore Tamilar Eyakkam in 1974.

! ix! Introduction

Identity Evolution in the Diaspora: The gradual disappearance of Untouchability and the Negotiation of Tamil Ethnicity in Singapore, 1825 – 1965

This study focuses on the evolution of the concept and practice of untouchability in the in Singapore between 1825 and 1965 and explores the broader issue of Indian identity negotiation during this period with specific reference to caste. During the colonial period, untouchable migrants formed a substantial segment of Indian labour migrants in Singapore, where they experienced discrimination on the basis of their caste identities. Today untouchability is no longer practiced and untouchability in Singapore’s past has undergone a process of erasure in the public memory. Former untouchables have successfully replaced caste identities with other identities that include a linguistically defined Tamil identity. I have taken the public “disappearance” of public discrimination and prejudice directed at untouchables and the disappearance of an untouchable identity – as a starting point. From this, I examine the history of untouchable migration, caste practice and identity negotiation that has been largely hidden from the textual archive.

Untouchability and caste consciousness in Singapore has a long and complex history that resists a narrow thematic approach. The diversity and heterogeneity of caste practice and the simultaneous existence of different “cultures of caste” during the period under study frustrate attempts to draw large over-arching narratives. Caste was not simply carried across the seas and established as part of an unproblematic cultural continuum; neither did caste simply disappear with overseas migration, as predicted by 19th and early 20th century colonial sources. Rather, caste sentiment and prejudice against untouchables varied in intensity, character and context throughout the period of study. This reflects the complex ways that migrants attempted to either establish or resist tradition in response to changes in the plural cultural landscape of Singapore, as well as the changing legislative architecture of migration that shaped its demographics.

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Many communities dealt with the experience of dislocation from their homelands by engaging in a process of cultural re-production as they attempted to recreate familiar cultural practices and institutions. Tamil immigrants also negotiated various competing identity narratives in relation not only to domestic conditions, but also in response to powerful transnational influences that included Indian nationalist and Dravidian ideology. In that sense, whilst the focus of this thesis will be on untouchable groups, it will also engage in a dialogue with a much broader social history of Singaporean society and colonial systems of knowledge production, as well as the discursive evolution of various Indian and Tamil identities in Singapore.

In this study, I examine the evolution of caste practices, the impact of migration, labour and transnational networks on identity and the interactions between political and social change and identity discourses. I argue that the outward forms of prejudice formerly associated with untouchability gradually disappeared in Singapore during the post-war period, as former untouchables transcended their caste identities by supporting the growth and propagation of a new casteless and egalitarian Tamil identity that was being promoted by Tamil-educated reformist leaders. I explore the ways in which colonial knowledge production, colonial public policies, caste and class consciousness, the dislocation of war, subsequent decolonisation and the process of nation-building shaped the way in which identity narratives were created by immigrants dealing with transnational loyalties and settlement in a plural multi-ethnic environment. In analysing the evolution of untouchable identities, I interrogate the ways in which caste and ethnic identities have changed in accordance with the broader socio-economic, transnational cultural and political changes that have been experienced by Singapore’s Indian community and which have marked Singapore’s development between its founding as a plural British settlement in 1819 through to its independence as a secular, multi-ethnic nation state.

The substantive latter half of this study focuses on the close relationship between the decline of outward displays of untouchable identity and caste prejudice and the creation and growth of an ethnic Tamil identity based primarily on a linguistic affinity between speakers. I argue that deep ideological cleavages within the Indian community increased the tendency for Tamils to see themselves as being

! 2! separate and distinct from other Indian groups during the post-war period, leading them to reject a pan-Indian identity. In contrast to the that provided the matrix for pan-Indianism in Malaya, Dravidian ideology articulated a transnational cultural project, rather than a political one, increasing the capacity for the Dravidian movement to retain social relevance in the lead up to decolonisation. The rationalist discourses of the Tamil reform movement provided an avenue for former untouchables to abandon their caste identities. This, together with government educational reforms and ethnic integration policies, eventually led to the “disappearance” of untouchability in the public sphere.1

Why Conduct a Historical Study of the Untouchable Community? ! ! Based on interviews, oral histories and newspaper reports it is apparent that there were periods in Singapore’s history, particularly prior to the Second World War, when public practices associated with untouchability were widespread. Unlike in other colonies located much further away from India - for example, - the mechanisms that strengthened and perpetuated caste identities and caste hierarchies were adapted to suit conditions present in urban Singapore; while undergoing numerous challenges, they remained fairly resilient for some time. 2 One such mechanism was the dynamic migratory networks that existed between Singapore and India that helped to reinforce the resilience of caste hierarchies and identities. After the end of the Second World War, outward practices associated with untouchability began to decline sharply, corresponding to an increasing emphasis on the expression of ethno-linguistic Indian identities, and Tamil identity in particular. The retreat of caste from the public sphere was followed between 1945 and the late 1960s by a decreasing emphasis on caste identities in the private sphere as well.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 I use the term “rationalist” here in the sense that it applied to the Dravidian movement with its emphasis on a normative modernity in which caste and other cultural practices were seen as pre- modern, backward and atavistic. 2 Brij Lal has demonstrated that the caste system “was among the earliest casualties of migration (to Fiji).” Brij V. Lal, Peter Reeves and Rajesh Rai, The Encyclopedia of the Indian Diaspora (: Editions Didier Millet, 2006), 373.

! 3! An examination of the popular historical narratives of Singapore however reveals a certain paucity of work on untouchability and caste. The existence of untouchability in Singapore’s past rarely surfaces as a topic for discussion within the multicultural public sphere, or even in the Indian community.3 In part, this silence in the national discourse no doubt reflects the notion that caste disappeared soon after Indian migrants arrived in Singapore. Yet as scholars have suggested, and as I will demonstrate with evidence in the early chapters of this study, untouchability and prejudice against untouchables was widespread amongst Tamils in the colony between the late 19th and mid 20th centuries, and untouchable immigrants made up a significant proportion of Tamil labour migration into Singapore.

This opens up a series of questions that this study aims to shed light on. Who were these migrants and what factors made them consider the overseas journey? For a significant period of time the identities of these migrants was intersectional. Not only were these migrants Indians and Tamils, rubber tappers or municipal labourers, they were also untouchables whose status was powerfully inscribed upon their daily lives and interactions. How then were caste practices established in Singapore, what were the social conditions faced by untouchable migrants and how did Indian migrants resist or challenge caste in social practice and discourse?

The absense of public discourse about untouchables in the past may partially be attributed to a widespread lack of knowledge amongst many third, fourth and even fifth generation Singapore Indians about their family caste backgrounds, which in turn suggests that many individuals and families have successfully replaced former low caste and untouchable identities with other ethnic identities that are more salient in the multicultural public spaces of Singaporean society.4 This is supported by sociological fieldwork that suggests that lower caste groups are far less likely to maintain an intergenerational consciousness of caste identity.5 Furthermore, the erasure of the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 3 Vineeta Sinha, A New God in the Diaspora: Muneeswaran Worship in Contemporary Singapore (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2005), 30; Vineeta Sinha, “ in Contemporary Singapore,” in Indian Communities in , eds. Kernial Singh Sandhu and A. Mani (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1993), 837. 4 Vineeta Sinha has observed this in her fieldwork, and has cited this as an example of the diminishing importance of caste in Indian homes in Singapore. Sinha, A New God, 30. 5 Fred Clothey also argues that caste consciousness amongst expatriate Tamils increases the higher an individual perceives his or herself to be in the caste hierarchy. Fred Clothey, Ritualizing on the

! 4! figure of the untouchable in contemporary public memory as well as in the archives raises qutions about how this could have occurred. I argue that that this process occurred as a result of the dynamic interactions between the discursive production of identity and evolving structural conditions.

I investigate how former untouchables in Singapore have resisted caste and negotiated new identities outside of India, and touch on ways in which untouchability itself is remembered and re-imagined by the Singapore Indian community. Since many Singaporean Tamils are descended from immigrants from these communities, a history of untouchability in Singapore is an important part of the wider history of Indian migration into and Singapore.6

This “gradual disappearance” of untouchability and the erasure of the untouchable within Singaporean Indian society is intriguing, and also makes a significant contribution to the growing body of scholarly work devoted to the study of identity construction of the global Indian diaspora. A substantial amount of literature now exists on the early Indian diaspora in other parts of the world, focusing on the process of re-imagining the homeland and detailing how the dialectic of remembering and forgetting was negotiated by the migrant through an over-arching experience of loss, separation and suffering. This is especially so with regards to colonies outside of Singapore, where indentured labour constituted a very large proportion of Indian migration.7 This is evident in the poetry of Khal Torabully and his concept of Coolitude. In her work with Torabully, Marina Carter describes caste in indentured colonies as a medium of resistance in its ability to provide a link with an old social order, hence challenging the external imposition of a ‘’ identity.8 What is missing from this perspective and of other scholarly work is a closer examination of !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Boundaries: Continuity and Innovation in the Tamil Diaspora (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006), 17. 6 A Mani placed the number of untouchables relative to the Tamil community in the 1970s as being one in ten. A. Mani, “The Changing Caste-Structure Amongst the Singapore Indians (masters thesis, University of Singapore, 1977), 252. An NUS academic I have spoken to off the record, places it much higher, at one in three. Fred Clothey has also suggested that the ‘vast majority’ of the current Tamil working class in Singapore has descended from untouchable and low caste labour migrants. Clothey, Ritualizing, 10. 7 The total number of indentured labourers who arrived in Singapore was very small in relation to the total number of Indian labourers who arrived on the island. This was partially due to the limited potential for the maintenance of plantation agriculture on the geographically small island. 8 Marina Carter and Khal Torabully, Coolitude: An Anthology of the Indian Labour Diaspora (London: Anthem Press, 2002).

! 5! migration on the caste subaltern, particularly the tensions experienced by low caste and untouchable immigrants between their need to reproduce aspects of ‘home- culture’ on the one hand, and their utilisation of the trangressive capacity of migration to leave behind old caste identities as a means of raising the the conditions of their lives, in a process Naipaul referred to as the “purification of the paria.”9

The Singaporean example is also unique for a number of reasons. Malaya experienced a much closer and more dynamic relationship with India compared with other colonies during the colonial period as a result of circular migration, as well as a result of the strong cultural and political linkages that were fostered by visits from prominent politicians and social reformers. In many ways Malaya was conceived by Indian migrants as being a part of greater India for a significant proportion of its colonial history. This broad sense of geographical connection and cultural continuity was ruptured by decolonisation. During its emergence as an independent nation state, Singapore was unique in the sense that the majority of its citizens identified as migrants and the recent descendents of migrants. Minorities, including the Indians participated in shaping a national culture that embraced a multi-racial diversity in lieu of a narrower mono-cultural normativisation. The evolution of caste within this context therefore closely reflects a broader two-way conversation about identity, belonging and diasporic solidarity. It illustrates the tensions inherent in the simultaneous negotiation of a Singaporean Indian identity alongside the negotiations of diasporic Indian and Tamil identities.

Challenges to Studying Untouchability in the Singaporean Context

Although many scholarly works dealing with the history of the Indian community in Malaya and Singapore have explored aspects of untouchability and the untouchable immigrant experience, no work focuses exclusively on the experiences of these groups or explores the identity discourses that developed within these communities. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly untouchable groups left very little trace in the historical record and substantial gaps in information exist, which render writing !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 9 Ibid., 202.

! 6! a history of that community a difficult enterprise. The untouchable castes of the were only enumerated in India’s first census in 1871 and their exact numbers in Singapore and the Straits Settlements prior to this are difficult to ascertain.10 Even after this time, due to inconsistent registration processes, only some labour migrants to Singapore had their castes recorded at the Madras and Negapatam immigration depots, before travelling to Malaya by ship.11 I have only found detailed statistical data on the caste of immigrants travelling to Malaya in Indian immigration reports between the years 1935 to 1937. Once in Malaya, the caste of an individual was no longer recorded by census and almost never recorded in any other official government documents. This meant that caste structures and the social significance of caste largely operated beneath both official government classificatory regimes and the apparatus of surveillance that was mobilised to manage Singapore’s plurality.

This was further enhanced by the fact that due to the purely economic rationale for the British governance of Singapore and their limited administrative resources, officials in Singapore adopted a policy of cultural non-interventionism.12 The government also took very little interest in recording cultural information or policing cultural practices that existed beyond the concerns of public order and safety. The issue of caste prejudice and discrimination, and the plight of untouchables, was never raised as a social justice issue by the authorities. Since most untouchables were government labourers, social issues faced by members of these communities were often presented through the trope of class. As such, within social welfare discourses, they were grouped together with other Indian menial labourers. Apart from the Tamil Reform movement, few other groups paid any attention to the specific caste-related disabilities and prejudices faced by such immigrants. And unlike in India, caste was

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 10 Simon Charsley has investigated the colonial creation of the untouchable or “Pariah” category and its problematic first appearance as a census category in 1871. Simon Charsley, “‘Untouchable’: What is in a Name?,” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2, no.1 (March 1996): 1-23. 11 Sunil Amrith has argued that the Madras Administration was more interested in establishing the agency and free-will of potential migrants rather than their actual identities and that deception was rampant. Sunil Amrith, “Indians Overseas? Governing Tamil Migration to Malaya: 1870-1941,” Past and Present 208 (August 2010): 238-9. 12 Unlike in post-Hastings India, where the British administration was exposed to strong Evangelical influences, the notion of a ‘civilising mission’ rarely appears in sources relating to colonial Singapore. Accordingly, education, social services and social reform were largely left up to community representatives and were not included amongst the responsibilities of government.

! 7! rarely a salient issue for Christian missionary groups who tended to focus on class, language and race when directing humanitarian efforts in Singapore.13

When untouchables are mentioned at all in the historical record it is usually by groups and individuals other than those within the community, and usually in a variety of different contexts. Since issues of untouchability are often not the central concern of such texts, an exclusive reliance on them to piece together historical narratives that reflect the everyday experiences of members of these communities can be challenging. However, the growing acceptance of non-textual sources in historical scholarship means that the partial historical accounts found in such records can now be supplemented and verified, or in some cases, disproved. This methodological development, in tandem with a renewed interest in applying the theoretical innovations of the cultural turn in the study of Singaporean social histories, has made untouchability in Singapore a suitable topic for historical enquiry.

Official national history narratives in Singapore have emphasised the humble backgrounds of many past immigrants, however their representation in public discourse has often been reductive. For example, the labouring poor in Singapore’s past have often been memorialised in official discourse. Statues of , samsui women (Cantonese and Hakka female labourers) and other labourers have been erected in and around the central business district, in Chinatown and along the Singapore River. However, such instances of memorialisation coincide with the dominant historical narrative of rapid economic success that the government has chosen to emphasise. 14 The juxtaposition of the statues against a backdrop of skyscrapers and luxury hotels not only recalls to the observer the indispensible role of the labouring migrant poor in building the national state, but also offers the public a subtle reminder that Singapore has moved forward.

Differences in historical representations of the labouring poor vis-à-vis Singapore’s past administrators, politics and community leaders are also telling. While the agency !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 13 For practical purposes, 19th century mission schools in the Straits were organised along linguistic and ‘racial’ lines. 14 Anoma Pieris has also criticised the overemphasis on economic history that has characterised historiographical approaches to Singapore’s past. Anoma Pieris, Hidden Hands and Divided Landscapes: A Penal ’s Rural Society (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009), 31.

! 8! and motivations of the latter are examined in detail as principal historical determinants in the successful realisation of both their own personal goals as well those of the nation, the labouring communities in Singapore’s past are often presented as an important but faceless socio-economic category and often appear in school textbooks as part of racial collectives.15 Their memorialisation, then, can be read as acknowledgement of their contributions as much as it can be read as a political manoeuvre undertaken to emphasise a particular national narrative.

The essence of this historiographical approach is captured in the title of Noel Barber’s history of Singapore, The Singapore Story: from Raffles to Lee Kuan Yew.16 Here, the “Singapore Story” is the narrative of the achievements of specific elites of society. In other accounts characterised by a similar approach, the origins and lived experiences of specific groups and individuals are collapsed to serve the broader narrative of a population brought rapidly out of structural poverty through hard work, discipline and sound leadership. Such a collapse also works to instill in a population with vastly different ancestral origins a shared, common history. Little emphasis has been paid to the ways in which common people psychologically transitioned from being sojourners and domiciled migrant residents in a colony, to becoming citizens of a nation-state.

The emphasis on economic policies and governmental elites also features heavily in dominant post-independence history narratives. Lara Liu has drawn attention to the fact that photographs contained in the second volume of Lee Kuan Yew’s published memoir, also called The Singapore Story, almost entirely comprise of photos of Lee with foreign dignitaries or of the country’s infrastructural developments. 17 Simultaneously, government narratives downplay pre-independence history – particularly pre-independence levels of infrastructure, as well as the actual urban and societal complexities of the burgeoning nation – and buttress pseudo-historical narratives that exaggerate the achievements of the People’s Action Party. In this !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 15 For more information about the nature of history ’s schools as well as the role of official history and the policing of alternative histories, refer to Afandi Suhaimi and Mark Baildon, “History Education in Singapore,” in Contemporary Public Debates Over History Education, eds. Irene Nakou, Isabel Barca (n.p., Information Age Publishing, 2010), 223-42. 16 Noel Barber, The Singapore Story: From Raffles to Lee Kuan Yew (London: Fontana, 1978). 17 Lee Kuan Yew, From Third World to First, The Singapore Story: 1965-2000 (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions and Press, 2000). This was mentioned in Lara Liu’s dissertation. Lara Liu, “The Eventuation of the Singapore Dream?” (honours thesis, University of New South Wales, 2007), 17.

! 9! narrative Singapore before 1965 is portrayed as a “back-water,” a “mangrove swamp” or a “sleepy fishing village.” This version of history in reinforced through repetition in the international media.18

Academic histories of Singapore have by and large transcended the elite-centred narratives of popular histories, adopting a broader scope that often address the histories of entire ‘racial’ or linguistic groups. The communities identified in these studies often employ institutionalised categories of ‘race.’ Early and definitive histories of the Indian community, such as Kernial Singh Sandhu’s Indians in Malaya and Sinnappah Arasaratnam’s Indians in Malaysia and Singapore, were pioneering works, which focused on the general history of the entire Indian community. While the production of such work was important at the time, and are still to this day authoritative works of considerable historical and sociological importance, they nonetheless present us with certain limitations. Written in the late sixties and early seventies, such works were necessarily descriptive given their large scope and the lack of preceding literature.19 Furthermore, as Indira Arumugam argues, some of this early work has tended to reproduce the colonial administrative emphasis on “the boundedness, homogeneity, coherence, stability and structure of race and culture.” 20

Since the 1980s, however, scholars have begun to bolster this historiography by making efforts to develop more specialised Singaporean ‘histories from below’ that take into account the heterogeneity of immigrant groups, and explore the everyday experiences of specific sub-groups of immigrants that find themselves placed within larger ‘racial’ or linguistic classifications.21 Ernest Koh, for example, has recently

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 18 Responding to a segment in the country’s 2011 National Day Parade, a commentator wrote in to Singapore’s Today newspaper to highlight the continued perpetuation of the erroneous idea that Singapore was little more than a fishing village before 1965. “The Power of Stories,” Today, August 15, 2011. 19 Kernial Singh Sandhu, Indians in Malaya: Some Aspects of their Immigration and Settlement, 1786- 1957 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969); Sinnappah Arasaratnam, Indians in Malaysia and Singapore (: Oxford University Press, 1970). 20 Indira Arumugam, “Sociology of the Indians,” in The Making of Singapore Sociology, eds. Tong Chee Kiong and Lian Kwen Fee (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 2002), 321. 21 Cheah Boon Kheng has also drawn attention to the shifts in Singapore’s historiography and increased interest amongst younger historians in “the lives of ordinary people as makers of history such as tea merchants, the lightermen of the Singapore River, the Chinese construction samsui women or artists who painted Singapore.” Cheah Boon Kheng, review of The Makers and Keepers of Singapore History, eds Long Kah Seng and Liew Khai Khiun (Singapore: Ethos Books and the Singapore Heritage Society, 2010), Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 84, no.1 (June 2010): 109-111.

! 10! written about the need to address imbalances in the historiography of Singapore by paying more attention to the histories of ‘ordinary people.’22 Many of these groups have been previously perceived as voiceless or as difficult to locate in the historical record, however there has been a recent move by academics to attend to the histories of groups within Singapore that have been excluded from traditional archives. Some recent examples of attempts to recover the histories of immigrants at the fringes of colonial society include James Warren’s interesting studies of Chinese rickshaw coolies, and Chinese and Japanese prostitutes in pre-war Singapore. 23 The methodological advances that have occurred as a result of the work of the Subaltern Studies Group (SSG) has also led to increasing importance being placed on the recovery of people’s histories, or histories from below. The presence of these factors, has undeniably created an academic climate more amenable to the study of untouchable groups, while the rise, since the early 1980s, of a politics revolving around caste identities and activism in India has made it an urgently important project.

Despite this, an unwillingness to explore the history of untouchability in the region persists. Caste remains a sensitive issue for many Indians in Singapore. In the public domain, caste is popularly associated with social injustice and carries with it connotations of backwardness, pre-modernity and chauvinism. Caste issues in general are often seen as a source of embarrassment, regardless of whether the debate takes places amongst individuals and groups of other races, or whether it is conducted within the Indian community itself. For example, in the course of conducting sociological fieldwork on Brahmin identity in Singapore, Ashvin Paramesvaran and Rodney Sebastian have observed the emergence of a guilt complex that prevents Singaporean Brahmins from expressing Brahmin identity because of the negative associations between Brahmins and the caste system.24 Older interviewees are often

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 22 Ernest Koh, “Ignoring ‘History from Below’: People’s History in the Historiography of Singapore,” History Compass 5, no. 1 (January 2007): 11-25. 23 James F. Warren, Rickshaw Coolie: A People’s History of Singapore, 1880-1940 (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2003); James F. Warren, Ah Ku and Karayuki-San: Prostitution in Singapore 1870-1940 (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2003). 24 Ashvin Paramesvaran and Rodney Sebastian, “Who is a Brahmin in Singapore?,” Modern Asian Studies 41, no. 2 (March 2007): 280. The issue of caste also became a source of embarrassment to members of the Indian community in 2009, after Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew issued some public remarks to rebut a speech from an Indian Nominated Member of Parliament who suggested that the government was straying from its commitment to racial equality in its treatment of . Lee stated

! 11! reluctant to discuss caste-consciousness in Singapore’s past or have a tendency to downplay its former significance. A. Mani and Nalini Schooling have also noted the gulf between the stated views of interviewees in the past with regards to caste and the views that they actually subscribed to in private practice.25 This last tendency, in particular, can pose a challenge to historians attempting to reconstruct narratives of caste identity.

Today, where it continues to exist, issues of caste identity have been largely relegated to the private sphere of the home and marriage, and are no longer manifest in Hindu temples and other places of worship. Where caste identities and group endogamy is maintained, it is usually justified on the basis of maintaining the unique cultural traditions of specific caste groups rather than based on an appeal to hierarchy or ritual purity and pollution. Balmurli Natrajan has recently written an interesting leftist critique of this phenomenon that he has termed the ‘culturalization of caste.’ Balmurli argues that in India, the tendency to view caste as a benign marker of ethnic difference rather than as a system of hierarchised inequality has led to its resilience in recent years. In this way, he argues, caste has been adapted to fit the multicultural paradigms that have attended neo-liberal transformations in India.26

In Singapore, the institutionalisation of meritocratic practices are based on the assumption that hereditary disadvantages can be overcome within the system, and indeed this is one of the prime reasons that humble beginnings are highlighted in dominant national history narratives. However such narratives often focus on economic dimensions such that, while attending to issues of class, the issue of caste remains un-broached. As a result, it continues to carry with it negative cultural associations that provide what many in the Indian community fear are a strong basis of social stigma. These fears are further compounded by contradictory messages from the Singapore government and senior politicians who have in the past made public !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! that “Indians are not equal” and claimed that a Brahmin/non-Brahmin divide was reflected in the membership of the Singapore Indian Development Association. “Dangerous to Let Highfalutin Ideas Go Undemolished: MM,” The Straits Times, August 20, 2009. http://news.asiaone.com/News/the+Straits+Times/Story/A1Story20090820-162122.html 25 Mani, “Changing Caste-Structure,” 329; Nalini Schooling, “The Study of Caste Practices and Attitudes Towards Caste Amongst Tamil Labourers in Singapore” (PhD diss., University of Malaya, 1959), 66-67. 26 Balmurli Natrajan, The Culturalization of Caste in India: Identity and Inequality in a Multicultural Age (London: Routledge, 2012), xiii-xvii, 5.

! 12! comments and instituted policies that have signaled a tacit acceptance of eugenic theories and the belief in the hereditary superiority of elite societal groups.27 In his memoirs, for example, Lee Kuan Yew has openly stated that Hindu Brahmins were among the most capable Indian immigrants to Singapore; a trait, he feels, shared by their descendants.28 Lee then repeated his admiration for Indian Brahmins in an interview with journalist Sunanda Datta-Ray, who went on to write that Lee viewed India through the prism of caste and class.29

These factors no doubt contribute to a general unwillingness by sections of the Indian community to address this aspect of their diasporic history. When asked why Indian today, unlike their Chinese Peranakan counterparts, tend to de-emphasise their unique cultural heritage, Samuel Dhoraisingam, the former Assistant Director of Education and president of the History Association of Singapore, stated that it was due to the circulation of the “most obnoxious and ill-founded theory” of their descent from Indian convicts.30 The perceived dishonour associated with penal transportation convicts is to a certain extent mirrored in the continuing stigma associated with individuals and communities who have genealogical links to the untouchable or the Adi Dravida community.31 Public discrimination and prejudice from an earlier time remain within the living memory of the oldest members of the community. Interviews conducted by A. Mani in the 1970s revealed that more than half of the Tamil caste- he questioned during that time stated they would object to their children marrying members from the community. 32 Such accounts pose a serious challenge to the popular notion that concepts and practices of untouchability simply !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 27 Policies that reflect eugenics beliefs include the Graduate Mothers Scheme (1984-5), which encouraged graduate women to have children and the setting up of the Social Development Unit to encourage university graduates to marry. The Graduate Mothers Scheme was eventually shelved after negative public response to the perceived elitism of the policy, which provided educational benefits to the children of graduate mothers. 28 Lee, From Third World to First, 736-9. 29 Abhijit Nag, “Indira and Lee Kuan Yew,” Pressrun.net, April 6, 2010, accessed October 10, 2011, http://www.pressrun.net/weblog/2010/04/indira-gandhi-and-lee-kuan-yew.html 30 Emphasis added. Samuel S. Dhoraisingam, Peranakan Indians of Singapore and Melaka: Indian Babas and Nonyas- Melaka (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies 2006), xi. 31 Clare Anderson has also argued that linking Indians to a convict history has been seen as problematic and potentially socially destabilising in multi-ethnic communities in Southeast Asia, which has led to relatively little attention being paid to the topic by historians. Clare Anderson, “The Politics of Convict Space: Indian Penal Settlements and the Andaman Islands,” in Isolation: Places and Practices of Exclusion, eds. Carolyn Strange and Alison Bashford (London: Routledge, 2003), 47. 32 A. Mani, “Caste and Marriage Amongst the Singapore Indians,” in The Contemporary Family in Singapore: Structure and Change, eds. Eddie C.Y. Kuo and Aline K. Wong (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1979), 203.

! 13! disappeared from the Indian community in Singapore at a much earlier period. Significantly, what it seems to suggest is that even while outward forms of caste prejudice disappeared, they continued to persist underneath the level of public discourse, albeit within a limited sphere of private practice. This study therefore concentrates on the outward disappearance of caste in the streets and temples of Singapore, and its disappearance as a salient feature of self-identity in the public sphere.

The rapid influx of educated Indian professionals to Singapore in the last two decades and the perception amongst Singaporean Indians that they are looked down upon by these new migrants - who are thought to be caste-conscious - also adds to an unwillingness to discuss the propensity of low-caste descent amongst certain ethno- linguistic Indian groups. Some of my interviewees, who were personally involved in Tamil reformist movements in the 1950s, have expressed concern at the recent appearance of caste-names in wedding and funeral announcements in Singapore’s main Tamil language newspaper, the Tamil Murasu.33 This is cited as evidence that growing numbers of new immigrants from India are increasing the profile and salience of caste identities within the larger Indian communities. One interviewee, V. Thamizhmaraiyan, the former Assistant President of a Tamil reform organisation, claimed the increased public profile of caste within the Indian community led his daughter to inquire about their family’s caste history and to express her distress upon learning that that the family had a former-untouchable background.34

A look through advertisements posted by Indian-national professionals based in Singapore on matrimonial websites confirms that caste endogamy remains an important consideration for many within the growing Indian expatriate community, even though no qualitative studies have been conducted to determine how widespread caste-consciousness is amongst Hindu expatriates or how transnational caste- identities influence perceptions of Singapore Indians with ambiguous caste backgrounds. Whether or not new immigration from India is indeed bringing about a gradual revival in caste-identities in Singapore, the growth of this perception has !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 33 M.P. Samy, interview by author, December 18, 2011. 34 V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 12, 2010. Thamizhmaraiyan was the Assistant President of the Thamizhavel Narppani Mandram, an organisation that previously functioned as an Adi Dravida, or untouchable Tamil organisation between the 1920s and 1950s.

! 14! manifested itself in popular xenophobic stereotypes about the new Indian migrant as an exporter of atavistic and backward social ideas. The imagined caste-conscious gaze of new Indian diaspora has rendered the discussion of untouchable genealogies a sensitive topic for many Singaporean Indians. In Malaysia, a country whose Tamil community shares a history of migration and social reform with Singaporean Tamils, the issue of untouchability took a much more explosive turn in the public sphere at the end of 2010.

In 2010, the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) attempted to pressure the Malaysian Education Ministry to drop a Malay literary novel, Interlok, from the high school syllabus, concerned over its references to an Indian character’s caste. Unlike in Singapore where the discussion of caste has been raised in the context of ongoing debates about immigration and immigrant assimilation, in Malaysia, caste has emerged in the context of discontent over the alleged discrimination against the Indian minority. The MIC claimed that the Malaysian Indian community was very upset over the novel’s references to caste in Malaya during the first half of the twentieth century. The main issue of contention was the use of the word ‘pariah,’ the name of an untouchable caste, in the novel.35 The Malaysian government’s refusal to remove the novel from the school curriculum, resulted in an “anti-racism rally” being organised by the Human Rights Party outside the Petronas Towers, leading to the arrests of 109 Indian activists on the 27th of February 2011. 36 Prior to the demonstration the MIC president had argued that caste had no relevance for Indians and that the community did “not want to be reminded of such things.”37 Expressing his worry that members of other communities would come to believe that most Indians in Malaysia were descended from untouchable migrants, Dr. S. Subramaniam, the MIC’s vice-president, stated that:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 35 “Hindu Rights Group Stages Rally in Malaysia, Over 100 arrested,” The Economic Times, February 27, 2011, accessed March 1, 2011, http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-02- 27/news/28638445_1_illegal-gathering-illegal-rally-p-uttayakumar 36 The Human Rights Party is linked to Rights Action Force (HINDRAF), which was declared illegal in Malaysia in 2008. 37 “Malaysia Textbook Sparks Anger Amongst Ethnic Indians,” MSN News Malaysia, March 1, 2011, accessed March 6, 2011, http://news.malaysia.msn.com/regional/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4555718

! 15! The book will be read by all the students, including those from other races, and I fear it will lead them away from our aim of creating a better understanding of the Indian community in the country. 38!

This recent anger over the perceived exclusion of the Indian community in the production of its own ethnic history comes after decades of accusations by of discriminatory treatment and cultural oppression. The fact that some members of the Indian community see the imposition of an untouchable caste history on their community as a manifestation of racism also highlights the continuing stigma attached to untouchability. Many Indians are especially sensitive of the suggestion of an untouchable past because of the socio-economic marginalisation of Malaysia’s Indians. The refusal to remove unfavourable references from the high school syllabus after requests from Indian community leaders has highlighted the asymmetrical power relationships that underscore the marginalisation of Indians in other areas of government policy. Malaysian Indian acquaintances of my interviewees have also suggested that for some, the issue lies in the threat of essentialisation.39 They feel that the connection made between the Malaysian Indian community and untouchability, by inferring that Indians are innately unable to progress socio-economically, shifts the blame away from the structural inequalities and government policies that mire the community in cycles of endemic poverty. Rajakrishnan Ramasamy has highlighted how the word “Pariah” has also taken on a derogatory meaning in the cultural lexicon of the Indian community in Malaysia that has surpassed any limited and purely taxonomical signification that the Malaysian government argues should characterise its usage in a post-caste society.40 Despite the claims of many Malaysian Indian community leaders about the irrelevance of caste, it continues to be a divisive issue

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 38 “MIC Wants BM Literature Book Touching Caste System Pulled Out,” Malaysia Today, December 19, 2010, accessed March 1, 2011, http://malaysia-today.net/archives/archives-2010/37042-mic-wants- bm-literature-book-touching-caste-system-pulled-out 39 V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 31, 2011. 40 Similarly in his study of caste in Singapore conducted in 1979, A. Mani observed that Adi Dravidas considered the word ‘Paraiyan’ insulting and that caste Hindus would resort to violence if the word were used to degrade their position. Mani, “Changing Caste-Structure,” 112-3. Rajakrishnan has analysed the negative connotations associated with the word ‘Paraiyar’ in Malaysia. He also cites an example in which a Paraiyar Organisation, on the verge of being formed in Klang, failed to materialize owing to the disagreements over the use of the word ‘Paraiyar.’ Ramasamy Rajakrishnan, Caste Consciousness Among Indian Tamils in Malaysia (Petaling Jaya: Pelanduk Publications, 1984), 69.

! 16! within the Indian community there and this has manifested itself in conflicts over various representations of immigrant history.41

In Singapore, though seldom raised, the issue of untouchability has on occasion entered the public domain. In 1992, the Singaporean Tamil playwright Elangovan, produced a play called Playing Pariah, about untouchable labourers working in Malaya during the colonial period. Reacting to strong criticism from former untouchables, the Singapore government banned a re-staging of the play.42 Oodadi, a subsequent play by Elangovan staged in 2003, featured an untouchable character named “Tamil Paraiyan.” The play featured a scene in which Singaporean prison wardens used a caste slur against the character’s mother. The prison wardens were later made to shout the insult while repeating it to an investigating officer. During a staging of the play at Singapore’s Substation, a former untouchable member of the audience ran up to the stage during this particular scene and knocked over a microphone stand in anger, disrupting the play until police officers arrived at the theatre.43

In 1998, members of a former Adi Dravida Sangam, held a meeting and lodged a complaint to Singapore’s Ministry of Education over the teaching of the caste system in ancient India in lower secondary English-language history textbooks, arguing that it would revive divisions in society.44 They were particularly upset over the image of

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 41 At the 2010 annual general meeting of the Malayan Indian Congress, the Malaysian Prime Minister, , urged the Congress to abandon caste factionalism between higher-caste Thevars and members of former untouchable castes. “MIC’s Caste Politics and 1 Malaysia,” The Malaysian Insider, July 11, 2010, accessed March 30, 2011, http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/mics- caste-politics-and-1-malaysia/ 42 V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 31, 2011; “Singapore Playwright Draws Flak from Indian ,” Indian Express, March 4, 1999, accessed March 16, 2013, http://expressindia.indianexpress.com/ie/daily/19990304/ige04007.html 43 V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 31, 2011. V. Thamizhmaraiyan was present and witnessed the incident alongside several other former-untouchables. Several other plays by Elangovan have attracted controversy or official censorship. The playwright and theatre director received death threats in October 2000 over the production of his play, Talaq which dealt with marital rape and violence in the community in Singapore. “Writer Receives Death Threat,” South China Morning Post reproduced on The Singapore Window, October 21, 2000, accessed March 16, 2013, http://www.singapore-window.org/sw00/001021sc.htm. The Media Development Authority in Singapore has banned three of his plays for allegedly being offensive to religious and ethnic communities. These include Talaq (2000), Smegma (2006) and Stoma (2013). “Media Development Authority Bans Elangovan’s Play Stoma,” Straits Times, January 9, 2013, accessed March 16, 2013, http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking-news/lifestyle/story/media-development-authority-bans- elangovans-play-20130109& 44 Thamizhavel Narppani Mandram, Minutes of Meeting, September 9, 1998.

! 17! an inverted Varna pyramid that featured untouchables belonging outside the caste system at the very bottom of four preceding Varna categories.45 The textbook also stated that the caste system “helped to bring order to society through the contributions of each caste” and the that “each person did his share to bring about peace and prosperity.”46

In a response, the Director of the Humanities Curriculum Planning and Development Division assured the organisation that the textbook’s account of the caste system was “factual” and “based on the broad consensus” of both Indian and Western historians, and that the teaching of the caste system was not to advocate class divisions in society. Besides taking offence at specific descriptions in the textbook, the organisation appears to have been particularly concerned that the teaching of the caste system to young teenagers would lead to a revival of interest in caste backgrounds, leading to the eventual visibility and re-imposition of an untouchable identity.47 The writer of the letter, V. Thamizhmaraiyan, noted that after reading the textbook, his youngest daughter asked her sister who “the Sudras” were.48

These examples highlight how particular sensitivities associated with discussing caste, and in particular low caste and untouchable pasts in both Malaysia and Singapore have persisted. This has made it a difficult topic to research, particularly with regards to sourcing potential interviewees.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 45 V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 31, 2011. 46 Singapore Government Ministry of Education, The Ancient , Southeast Asia and China (Singapore: Curriculum Planning and Development Division, Ministry of Education, 1998), 22. During interviews with Thamizhmaraiyan, I was shown the second edition of the updated history textbook for lower secondary students. The varna pyramid remained within explanations of caste in ancient India but the “untouchables” category had been replaced with the word “Pariahs”, highlighting the generalised usage of a regionally specific Tamil sub-caste designation. The textbook also stated that the caste system in ancient India gave “members of the different castes a sense of belonging to a “little community.”” Andrew Mayer, The Living Past: History of Ancient India, China and Southeast Asia (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Education, 2005), 69. 47 V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 31, 2011. 48 Ibid.

! 18! Scope

! Louis Dumont has highlighted that caste is an “Indian institution” that is not limited to Hinduism but exists in other religious communities in India.49 Likewise, caste practice in Singapore is not restricted to the Hindu community, and has existed in various forms among certain Sikh, Indian Muslim and Indian Christian groups.50 As argued by Vineeta Sinha, even the category “Singaporean Hindu,” while having its heuristic utilities and existing on the level of national policy, actually encompasses an array of regional and sectarian differences.51 These differences are substantial enough to challenge the notion of a wider Hindu community existing as a salient category for practitioners in Singapore during the day-to-day performance of religious identity. These regional or linguistic divisions also extended to caste identities. Hindi-speaking Brahmins from North India did not see themselves as part of a wider caste community with Tamil-speaking Brahmins from the South. This is evidenced by the creation of separate temples and associations for the various communities that have originated from different regions in India.52

Given the complexity of all the Indian communities that have observed caste in Singapore’s past, I will not be attempting to provide an overarching account of changing caste identities in Singapore. Such an attempt would be well beyond the limited scope of a thesis, and likely be reductionist in nature. Instead, my focus will be on the Tamil Hindu community, which is the single largest Indian group in Singapore and has been for most of Singapore’s history.53 In an effort to actively !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 49 Louis Dumont, Homo Hierachichus: The Caste System and its Implications (1966), trans. Mark Sainsbury (London: Paladin, 1970). 50 Paramesvaran and Sebastian, “Who is a Brahmin,” 253-86. For an ethnographic account of a Catholic caste community in Singapore, refer to J. Stevens, “Catholic Vellalar: Preserving a Special Identity,” in New place, Old Ways: Essays on Indian Society and Culture in Modern Singapore, ed. Anthony R. Walker (Delhi: Hindustan Pub. Corp, 1994), 194-218. For work relating to caste amongst the Malayalee Syrian Orthodox Community in Singapore refer to Mary Eapen K. Mathew, Marriage Patterns and Community Identity among the Syrian Christians in Singapore (honours thesis, University of Singapore, 1975) and S. Thomas, “Syrian Christians in Singapore: Ethnicity in Process” (honours thesis: National University of Singapore, 1991). 51 Sinha, A New God, 18. 52 One of the oldest caste associations in Singapore, the Dakshina Brahmana Sabha means “Southern Brahmin Association.” 53 Tamils make up 34 per cent of the resident Singaporean Indian population and still constitute a sub- ethnic majority although the recent immigration of other Indian groups has seen a drastic reduction in the proportion of Tamils in the last five years. In 2005, Tamil Hindus alone made up at least 60 per cent of the entire Indian population. Singapore Government Department of Statistics, Ministry of Trade and Industry, Census of Population 2010 Statistical Release 1: Demographic Characteristics,

! 19! manage Singapore’s inter-ethnic relations, and enforce an impartial multi-culturalism, the People’s Action Party has relied heavily on the official use of “Chinese, Malay, Indian and Other” (CMIO) as salient categories that inform policy. For many decades the Indian category has been subsequently identified primarily with Tamil Hindu culture in both government representations and language policies. 54 Recently scholars such as Rajesh Rai have highlighted the scholarly bias towards the Tamil community with regards to the history and sociology of Singapore’s Indians.55 While aware of this bias, I have chosen to focus on the Tamil community not merely for its numerical superiority or its privileged position in Singaporean government policy. I have chosen the community because there is evidence to suggest that based on immigrant demographics, untouchability was an almost exclusively Tamil phenomenon.

Other Indian communities did include members from traditionally low castes engaged in occupations like cattle rearing and laundering, but there was a lack of substantial immigration from untouchable castes belonging to these regional or linguistic groups. This was due to the fact that the kangany and indenture systems of labour recruitment were concentrated primarily in Tamil speaking regions of the Madras Presidency.56 Unassisted labour migrants were also far more likely to come from Tamil-speaking regions that were close to the ports of embarkation to Malaya. The demographics of the immigrant Tamil community during the colonial period included more labourers and menial workers than the other Indian communities and, due to colonial labour policies and economic forces, Tamil immigrants were far more likely to be drawn from lower socio-economic groups. Tamils were over-represented in both indentured plantation workforces and colonial public works departments.57

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Education, Language and Religion (Singapore: Singapore Department of Statistics, 2012), 31; Parameswaran and Sebastian, “Who is a Brahmin,” 259. 54 For more information refer to Beng Huat Chua, “Culture, Multiracialism and National Identity in Singapore,” in Trajectories: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, ed. Kuan-Hsing Chen (London: Routledge, 1998), 190. 55 Rajesh Rai, “Sepoys, Convicts and the ‘Bazaar’ Contingent: The Emergence and Exclusion of ‘Hindustani’ Pioneers at the Singapore Frontier,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 35, no. (February 2004): 1. More recently Gerard McCann has also commented on the historiographical bias towards Tamil labourers who were part of the Malayan “plantocracy.” Gerard McCann, “Sikhs and the City: Sikh History and Diasporic Practice in Singapore,” Modern Asian Studies 45, no. 6 (March 2011): 3. 56 A Straits Settlements government report for instance noted that a Kangany had to be a South Indian in order to qualify for a license. A.S. Small, Annual Report on the Social and Economic Progress of the People of the Straits Settlements 1936 (Singapore: Government Printer, 1937), 31. 57 Clothey, Ritualizing, 6.

! 20! Due to a lack of census material on the caste-breakdown of Indian immigrants in Singapore and Malaya, Sinnappah Arasaratnam attempted to reconstruct the caste composition of migrants from the Madras Presidency using the 1931 census. According to census figures, roughly one third of the immigrants belonged to Tamil untouchable castes like the Paraiyan, Pallan and Chakilliyan as well as other low ranking castes.58 An annual report from 1930 reported that more than a fourth of all immigrants to both Malaya and Ceylon were from the depressed classes.59 Additional evidence from the 1930s further suggests the high numbers of untouchable migrants who arrived during this period. A report in the Straits Times in 1934 noted that in normal years at least one third of all Indian immigrant labourers belonged to the depressed classes.60 Between 1935 and 1937, the caste of unskilled labour migrants to Malaya and Ceylon was noted in annual emigration reports.61 The Adi Dravidas made up the largest caste group for migrants leaving for Ceylon and were also the second largest caste group amongst migrants departing to Malaya for this period.62 In my second chapter I argue that from untouchables were arriving from a much earlier period and comprised a significant amount of Tamil labour arrivals from the 1870s, being amongst the first groups to undertake migration.

The large presence in Singapore of untouchables from the Tamil-speaking communities was the result of a number of colonial policies. For example, it was colonial policy to recruit South Indians for menial work partly because of the lower costs associated with recruiting labour near the eastern port cities of the Madras

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 58 Sinha, A New God, 22. ‘Arunthathiyars’ is the term by which former-Chakilliyans in present day refer to themselves. The previous term has come to be regarded as derogatory. Joe Arun Chockalingam, “From Outcaste to Caste: The Use of Symbols and Myths in the Construction of Identity: A Study of Conflict between the Paraiyars and the Vanniyars in Tamil Nadu, ” (PhD diss., University of Oxford, 2003/2004), 34. A. Mani has also estimated that one in ten Tamils during the 1970s in Singapore was descended from a member of one of the Tamil untouchable or Adi

Dravida castes. Mani, “Changing Caste-Structure,” 252. 59 Annual Report on the Workings of the Indian Emigration Act, 1922, for the year 1930 (Madras: Madras Government Press, 1931), p. 10, IOR: V/24/1197, British Library. 60 “Caste in Malaya,” Straits Times, January 26, 1934, 10. 61 By that time, Malaya and Ceylon were the only two locations that unskilled Indian labour migration was allowed. In 1935, untouchable castes including Adi Dravidas, Vallunvans, Chakkilis and Pallars constituted roughly twenty per cent of all the unskilled Tamil migration. This figure excludes numerous other Christian ‘castes’ like the ‘Madras Christians’ and ‘Negapatam Christians’ who were very likely communities of untouchable converts. Annual Report on the Workings of the Indian Emigration Act, 1922, for the Year 1935 (Madras: Madras Government Press, 1931), p. 29, IOR: V/24/1197, BL. 62 Ibid; Annual Report on the Workings of the Indian Emigration Act, 1922, for the Year 1937 (Madras: Government Press, 1931), p. 21, IOR: V/24/1197, BL.

! 21! Presidency, like Negapatam on the Coromandel Coast.63 Up until the turn of the century, labour recruiters also favoured the enlistment of Tamil labour from relatively small geographical areas concentrated around the ports to minimise the risk of losing money spent on train tickets and lodging for labourers who could potentially fail medical examinations and be denied passage to Malaya. 64 According to the ethnographic characterisations of the time, South Indians, or Dravidians as they were named in colonial ethnography, were also believed to be docile and particularly suited for manual labour.65 The famed colonial ethnographer Herbert Risley wrote that labour was “the birthright of the pure Dravidian.”66 This was especially believed to be true of the untouchables and other “polluting” castes. Due to their significant numbers, communities from the untouchable Tamil castes like the Paraiyans and the Pallans formed territorially segregated communities within larger Indian enclaves. Tamil untouchables have also left their trace in the form of temples dedicated to Muneeswaran, a deity that although now has devotees from all socio-cultural groups, was during earlier periods recorded as being particularly associated with the untouchable community.67 The untouchable associations in Singapore or Adi Dravida Sangams that were registered were almost exclusively named after Tamil-speaking regions in South India.68

Although I will examine other areas in Malaya, reflecting the shared history Singapore has with present day Malaysia, I will focus primarily on Singapore due to several socio-historical conditions that are unique to the island and therefore render a limited focus worthwhile. These include the different demographics concerning the historical Indian community, the development of specific institutions and organisations, a relative lack of communal politics in Singapore, as well as different government policies regarding multi-culturalism and race-relations. With most of the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 63 These ports were Tuticorin, Negapatam, Karikal, Madras and Cocanada. Edgar Thurston, The Madras Presidency with Mysore, Coorg and the Associate States (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1913), 42. 64 Annual Report on Indian Immigration for the Year 1901, 16 Jun 1902, p. 6, IOR/L/PJ/6/603, File 1181, British Library. 65 Tony Ballantyne describes how Orientalists tended to depict South Indians as being “timid” and “effeminate.” Tony Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the (: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 50. 66 Herbert Hope Risley, The People of India, rev. ed. (1913; repr., : Asian Educational Services, 1999), 45. 67 Sinha, A New God, 19; Mani, “Changing Caste-Structure,” 106. 68 Of the Adi Dravida associations still registered in 1974, all the associations with regional names were named after regions in Tamil Nadu. Mani, “Changing Caste-Structure,” 213-4.

! 22! population residing within the plural environment of the urban municipality, the experiences of Indian labour in Singapore were also very different from the rest of Malaya, where the majority of Indian labour resided in socially isolated plantations, which allowed certain Indian communities to maintain a much higher degree of cultural congruency with India.69 It is also significant that within Malaya, Singapore was the epicenter of ideological exchange with India and it was in Singapore that the pan-Indianism of Congress-led nationalism and the Tamil reform efforts of the Dravidian movement first found expression in organisations that subsequently spread to other parts of Malaya.

The timeframe for this research will cover the period between 1825, when Indian transmarine convicts first arrived in Singapore and 1965 when Singapore gained independence. Although South India has long had historical links with Malaya through trade, religion and conquest, the Singaporean Indian community today mostly traces its roots to immigration after 1819, when Singapore was established as a British settlement.70 Although migration began in 1819, I begin my study in 1825 by examining penal policies that were implemented amongst Indian convicts who comprised the early municipal workforce in Singapore. An analysis of the impact of economic and occupational mobility and long-term territorial dislocation on cultural continuity and caste during the convict period provides an instructive contrast with labour institutions and relationships during the later period of extensive Tamil migration. Tamil labour migration to Singapore increased substantially from the 1870s onward. Labour migration from India was periodically affected by labour migration restrictions and legislation, fluctuations in the economy and the outbreak of the Second World War, but it is from the 1870s that Tamil Hindu labourers began to replace South Indian Muslims as an identifiable ethno-religious majority community

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 69 Ravindra Jain’s sociological study of an Indian community in a Malaysian plantation provides a detailed investigation into the totalising effects of plantation society. Ravindra K. Jain, South Indians on the Plantation Frontier in Malaya (London: Yale University Press, 1970). The educational opportunities in Malaysian Plantation schools have also tended to reinforce the isolation of plantation dwellers by limiting opportunities for social advancement. T. Marimuthu, “The Plantation School as an Agent of Social Reproduction,” in Sandhu and Mani, Indian Communities in Southeast Asia, 465-83. 70 For a brief summary of India’s pre-colonial links with Malaya, as well as an account to of the first Indians to arrive in Singapore after its establishment at a British settlement in 1819, refer to George Netto, Indians in Malaya: Historical Facts and Figures (Singapore: The author, 1961), 9-14. Singapore became an official British settlement in 1824 after negotiations with the Dutch.

! 23! in Indian society.71 The Indians who came to Singapore included convicts, soldiers, traders, clerks, and administrators but the largest group, after the abolition of penal transportation to Singapore in the 1860s, were labourers. In the twentieth century the relative affordability of travel between Singapore and India meant that Indian immigrants to Singapore were largely transient workers, and many of them saved, or were provided with money, for an eventual passage back to India, which they viewed as home.72 This only began to change after the Second World War when, in the lead up decolonisation and independent statehood, immigration laws were tightened and Indians had to choose to become citizens or be faced with the possibility of being sent back to India.73 This is significant because, unlike other overseas Indian communities, the Singaporean community was not only marked by a much more dynamic process of transnational cultural exchange with India, but also by a far greater level of flux in terms of the coming and going of individuals and families.74

Consequently, this study of changing identities is not limited to an examination of the changing intergenerational attitudes within ‘Singaporean Indian’ families. Instead I will also be looking at changes that occurred within Indian cultural institutions in Singapore such as Hindu temples, social and political organisations and the Indian press, which provided a basis for the beginning of a specifically Malayan or Singaporean to emerge along a different trajectory from India. These institutions served as an anchoring link between the comings and goings of a transient

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 71 Around this period Tamil Hindus began to replace South Indian Muslims as the dominant Indian community in Singapore numerically. Edwin Lee, The British as Rulers: Governing Multiracial Singapore: 1867-1914 (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1991), 157. 72 The cost of return passages, while within the means of most Indian labourers, also significantly eroded individual savings. This cost was heavier for unskilled Indian labourers who tended emigrate alone and were also burdened with monthly remittances for families in India. In 1926 the average return passage cost Rs. 28 rupees, which was roughly equivalent to more than two months wages. Government of Madras, Emigration and Immigration Report 1926, May 17, 1927, p. 4, G.O. No. 1116 L, IOR: V/24/1196, British Library (BL)" 73 The price of steam-ship tickets also greatly increased during the postwar period, making it far more unaffordable for the poorest Indian immigrants to return home after the war. A doctor in the Congress Medical Mission to Malaya observed that prices for deck passengers had gone from Rs. 12-16 rupees in 1940 to about Rs. 100 in 1947, a mere seven years later. S.R.S Tenali, Congress Mission to Malaya (n.p.: Kalyani Press, 1947), 51. 74 Adrian C. Mayer, Peasants in the Pacific: A Study of Fiji Indian Rural Society (: University of California Press, 1973), 5. By the 1920s, Ceylon and Malaya were the only two countries to which emigration of unskilled labourers continued to be lawful under section 10 of the Indian Emigration Act. Government of Madras, Emigration and Immigration Report 1926, May 17, 1927, p. 1, G.O. No. 1116 L, IOR: V/24/1196, BL.

! 24! minority, and also provide a sensitive register of the dynamics underscoring the evolving cultural relationship between India and Singapore.

When Singapore became independent in 1965, the People’s Action Party responded to the growing dominance of Dravidian interests by privileging the Tamil language and Tamil culture. I have therefore chosen independence as an end date in order to capture the Tamil revivalism that emerged after the Second World War and which influenced these national policies. Between the end of the Second World War and 1965, many Indians were also beginning to question existing notions of what constituted a homeland and were beginning to identify with Malaya and Singapore to a greater extent than with India. This had a profound effect on the development of ethnic, racial and linguistic identity amongst Indians in Singapore; ending my inquiry in 1965 allows me to explore these issues and draw links with earlier social developments that occurred in the 1920s and 1930s.

Who are the Untouchables in this Study? ! This study traces developments, changes and intellectual genealogies over almost one and a half centuries. Over this duration, many terms and categories for different groups of people evolved considerably in their meanings and significatory boundaries. In British India, the process of classifying and categorising native peoples constituted what Eugene Irschick has described as a “dialogic” process, which occurred as a constant negotiation between both British producers of knowledge, as well as Indian groups about whom such knowledge was being produced.75 Indian interest groups would attempt to influence the ways in which they were classified and represented in colonial ethnography in order to alter their relative social status, and gain increased access to resources and forms of patronage. British officials were cognisant of this. This meant that ethnographic classifications were unstable and tended to shift over time. Without proper clarification, terms such as “untouchable” are slippery and problematic when applied in reference to different groups of people spread across such a considerable timeframe. I will therefore briefly trace some developments in the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 75 Eugene F. Irschick, Dialogue and History: Constructing South India, 1795-1845 (London: University of California Press, 1994), 8, 10.

! 25! term, before explaining the ways in which I use the term, as well as other related terms such as “Adi Dravida.”

“Dalit” has become the primary name used by academics and the mass media to label former untouchable groups, and is popular because it has been used by many communities in India as a self-designating term; thus its usage takes into account the agency of these groups themselves. I rarely use the term here, simply because it started gaining prominence from the 1970s, rendering it anachronistic in reference to most of the timeframe under investigation. Similarly the term Harijan, which was popularised by Gandhi from the 1930s and means “children of God”, is problematic because many untouchables and untouchable leaders like B.R Ambedkar and R. Srinivasan rejected it.76 The term Harijan was considered patronising and suggested that untouchables were worthy of sympathy, and idea that according to Ambedkar, needed to be replaced by a rights-based discourse. For Ambedkar, framing untouchable issues within the language of rights offered a sharp contrast to their portrayal as passive groups in need of charitable consideration. “Untouchable” is also a problematic term and the term has fallen into disfavor in India since untouchability was banned in the Indian constitution. Terms like ‘ex-untouchable’ and ‘former- untouchable’ reinforce the uneasy utility of the term. I have however chosen to use the term “untouchable” because it is widely understood and is appears to be the English term used in reference to the community by most Indians featured in the oral history records of the National Archives in Singapore. This is probably a reflection of the cultural distancing from India that occurred amongst members of the Indian diaspora in Singapore between the 1940s and 1950s, when the term was still widely in use. It is important to briefly outline the history of the term before explaining its particular significance in this study.

Simon Charsley has written about the relatively recent creation of the term “untouchable” in early twentieth century colonial discourse, cautioning scholars against the uncritical use of the term without consideration of the history of its !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 76 Indira Rothermund, “Maharashtra’s Response to Gandhian Nationalism,” in Region, Nationality and Religion, eds. A.R. Kulkani and N.K. Wagle (Mumbai: Popular Prakashan, 1999), 84; “Untitled,” Madras Mail, 27 December, 1933; Under Secretary’s Safe File No. 862, February 20, 1934, Tamil Nadu Archives, quoted in Raj Sekhar Basu, Nadanar’s Children: The Paraiyans’ Tryst with Destiny, Tamil Nadu 1850-1956 (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2011), 306.

! 26! creation and the social consequences of its governmental, academic and popular usage.77 He credits Herbert Risley for popularising the term in the early twentieth century and argues that part of the reason for its creation stemmed from the desire of British census writers like Risley to identify common patterns in caste observance across the entire subcontinent to render the cultural diversity of India more comprehensible to policy planners and government officials. Charsley provides a very detailed account of the changing terminology that was used by British census-takers and ethnographers to conceptually link those who were at the bottom of regional caste structures across the subcontinent. He also explains the difficulties that they faced in formulating a workable definition for this group. Generally speaking, the term was applied to caste groups that experienced significant social disabilities, and were regarded as being both physically and ritually unclean. This was often accompanied by the enforcement of proximity rules in which these groups had to avoid touching or being physically proximate to higher caste Hindus and were prevented by these higher caste Hindus from using public infrastructure such as wells and roads due to a fear of contamination. Charsley suggests that the incorporation of the term “untouchable” in official sources led to the dichotomisation of Hindu society by emphasising and solidifying the boundaries between “caste-Hindus” and “untouchables.” He argues that this paved the way for the entrenchment of untouchability through its later politicisation, and its utilization as an identity marker for mass mobilisation. An important consideration that is highlighted in Charsley’s work is the fact that for much of its early history, the term “untouchable” was largely an abstract category that referred to various disparate regional and ethnic groups of people conceptually linked together in the ethnographic imagination. These groups were very heterogeneous and did not see themselves as sharing a common identity.

For the larger part of this study “the untouchables” I refer to are Tamil untouchables from three major caste groups; the Pariahs, Chakkiliyars and Pallars. The Pariahs were the largest and most prominent group, sometimes leading to the designation of “Pariah” as an umbrella term for all the other untouchable groups in Malaysia.78 A. Mani has highlighted that there was competition between these three caste groups and

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 77 Charsley, “Untouchable.” 78 Ramasamy, Caste Consciousness, 10.

! 27! that they segregated themselves from each other.79 Groups of Pariahs and Pallars also fought to gain recognition of their hierarchical ascendency over each other. Chakkiliyars also recognised lineal Gotra and Kilai divisions amongst themselves.80 In polite parlance, other Tamil groups commonly identified these and other smaller groups as Adi Dravidas or the original Dravidians.81 This term was also used by these groups to horizontally mobilise themselves into Adi Dravida Sangams or Adi Dravida associations which aimed at the uplift of all these groups. This sense of collective identity was partly shaped during the twenties and thirties in Malaya by the transnational influence of the Indian Congress and Gandhi’s efforts. The Congress was to bring attention to the plight of India’s untouchables through and proposed legislative reforms in India. In the language used by the international media and by Congress leaders themselves during this period, little recognition was made of any hierarchical subdivisions within the “untouchable” category. The horizontal homogeneity that was represented was an essential component of discourses that ascribed structural victimhood to the untouchables as a means of shaping public opinion against caste injustices.

The fact that these subdivisions were not countenanced by higher castes or elites aided a process of erasure in which these differences were slowly eroded in urban areas, where new economic relationships were divested of symbolic significance and where former cultural inter-dependencies were absent. The language used by Congress leaders, the press and Christian missionaries also reflected the ideas of prominent untouchable leaders from the 19th century such as and Ayothee Thass Pandithar. Although these leaders were involved in social movements that were regional in nature, from their writings and records of their speeches, it is evident that ideologically, they conceived of much wider untouchable categories that transgressed narrow regionalisms and encompassed longer spans of history and greater territorial spaces in the attempt to construct much wider imagined communities. In a sense these leaders engaged with and reappropriated notions of Varna that were popularised in British Orientalism, and downplayed the importance of Jati as an identity-marker.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 79 Mani, “Changing Caste-Structure,” 30, 130. 80 Mani, “Caste and Marriage,” 192. 81 Mani, “Changing Caste-Structure,” 130.

! 28!

Untouchable Tamil immigrants arriving in Malaya did not universally accept this sense of collective identity. Nor did they accept the Adi Dravida label. Between 1935 and 1936, some immigrants headed to Malaya from the eastern ports of the Madras Presidency listed their caste as Chakkili, Dhobi or Pallan instead of Adi Dravida, which, in an ambiguous way, was simultaneously used as a designation for those specifically from the Pariah caste as well as for those from untouchable castes in general.82 This infers that the term Adi Dravida was not universally adopted by untouchables in the Madras Presidency during this period, and that for many, regional Jati identities were more salient.83 I will therefore specify the contexts in which I use the term Adi Dravida in this thesis, but for the most part, I am referring to a projected common identity that encompassed various Tamil untouchable castes. In Singapore the term Adi Dravida became a term by which all these groups came to be known and it also became a popular self-designating term for Tamils from these castes who organised themselves into associations.84

I also make reference to “untouchables” amongst the Indian convict population of early Singapore, particularly in Chapter Two. Little is known about these convicts, apart from the fact that initial batches of convicts were highly heterogeneous and untouchables from various parts of India were present amongst the convict population in high numbers. Because the specific identities of these convicts is difficult to ascertain it is also difficult to draw any direct links between them and the untouchable Tamil labour migrants who started arriving closer to the turn of the century. In the absence of more information, it is therefore anachronistic and inaccurate to suggest a kind of continuity or common identity between “untouchable” convicts and the untouchable labourers that arrived later. As far as social disabilities and caste prejudice was concerned however, these groups arrived from similar social contexts !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 82 There is significant ambiguity with regards to the interchangeability of the terms Pariah and Adi Dravida. The first census of India in 1871 used the term Pariah to denote all untouchables or ‘outcastes’ even though the term Pariah denotes a specific caste group in South India. Subsequently the term Adi Dravida was claimed by both individuals belonging specifically to the Pariah caste as well as by other untouchable groups in general. This problematised the adoption of the Adi Dravida label by other untouchables and its usage and meaning are entirely dependent on specific contexts. 83 This reflects the limited penetration that the ideas of Dravidian reformers and Untouchable leaders had in some rural areas. It also points to the possibility that Sanskritising impulses were very strong and that inter-jati competition led to a rejection of horizontal unity amongst various untouchable castes. 84 Vineeta Sinha argues that the Adi Dravida category comprised six main sub-castes in Singapore. Sinha, A New God, 30.

! 29! as Tamil untouchable labourers who came later. By trying to analyse the social affects of penal transportation into Singapore on these convicts we can discern aspects of the cultural landscape in Singapore in the 19th century and understand the world into which Tamil labourers came to the island later on. In particular, I argue that the 19th century was a time of cross-cultural syncretism and laxity with regards to caste. This period of discontinuity or rupture is important because it helps us to understand the re-introduction of rigid caste-identities as a creative process which involved adaptation to local conditions and did not entail a simple carrying over of the caste system into an environment already suited for caste identities. In this sense, I utilise these convicts as a trope through which to explore 19th century social conditions. The experience of Indian convicts is also important because many of them were released after the abolition of the penal settlement in Singapore. Many of them stayed on in Singapore and assimilated into wider society, becoming part of the Malay-Muslim community through marriage, or forming part of the community that would later identify themselves as “Straits-born Indians.” The Straits-born Indian community held itself apart from the Indian immigrant community and became an alternative reference point for some Indian untouchable immigrants.

Sources

In this study I trace how the dynamic interactions between discourse, ideology, politics, policies, and economic and social relations, had an impact on everyday practices and identities. I have therefore balanced the examination of quotidian practices with a close study of the larger structural processes that shaped migrant identity. As such the subjects of chapters ranges, for example, from the politics of Indian nationalism in Malaya, to the social politics of using glassware in coffee shops in a particular Indian enclave in Singapore. Most of the historical material pertaining to untouchables comes through mediated sources, requiring a keen awareness of the different agendas infused in them. Textual sources provide a good source of information for tracing larger structural patterns in ideological discursive change, political culture and governmental policy as well as trans-border debates about social reform and the nature of Malayan Indian social movements themselves.

! 30!

Newspapers for example are a very important source of information that I have utilised in this study. English language newspapers indicate changing European attitudes towards caste and also the exposure of English-educated Indian elites to those attitudes in the elite public sphere. English-language newspapers were the means by which different interest groups and reformist organisations within the Indian community promoted competing political ideologies and identity narratives. Newspapers demonstrate how these interest groups attempted to gain the authority to represent the Tamil and wider Indian communities by engineering consensus over social issues and by attempting to create imagined communities by mobilising various symbols and identity markers. Newspaper coverage of events in India, and on prominent Indian political and social figures, further highlights the transnational relationships between overseas communities and influential groups and individuals on the subcontinent. This is significant because the development of untouchable identity and the gradual disappearance of a structural framework for the maintenance of a communal untouchable identity occurred in the context of alternative solutions put forth by pan-Indian nationalists and pan-Tamil Dravidianists over issues related to caste. Certain English and Tamil newspapers also carried advertisements and reports on meetings and activities conducted by reformist groups or Adi Dravida Sangams, which are important, as no actual records survive from most of these Adi Dravida Sangams. By piecing together what little information is contained in these announcements, it is possible to gather information on certain elements of these associations; namely, information on the key figures involved, activities organised as well as their demographic composition and size.

A handful of government records do exist which mention caste and make specific reference to untouchables on the island and in Malaya. These individual documents often do not reveal much on their own but when juxtaposed with other primary and secondary sources help to build a composite picture of not just the lives of untouchables but also their shifting place within the Indian and the wider Singaporean social order.

Due to the fact that the Adi Dravidas were largely Tamil speaking and mostly worked in specific labouring occupations, there is much to learn about the lives of

! 31! untouchables by consulting textual sources related to the Tamil community and Indian labour in general. In addition to this, information can be gathered from sources pertaining to specific occupational professions in which high numbers of individuals from the Adi Dravida community were known to be involved with. One example includes the public cleansing unit of the Public Works Department (PWD). This opens up a range of other sources pertaining to the demography of the Tamil community such as census reports and government reports that shed light on labour issues and the living conditions of untouchable workers.

Locating information about quotidian everyday practices has been far more difficult within the textual archive and sources are often fragmentary and disconnected. Gyanendra Pandey has recently argued that, with reference to practices of discrimination, “the evidence that identifies or signifies its everyday forms and discriminatory behaviour is scrappy and ambiguous.” 85 He writes about the difficulties of putting together a history of prejudice based on rarely archived or “un- archived” actions and non-events which are neither datable and sometimes “not even nameable to be written”.86 A history that also examines the every day realities of caste prejudice in Singapore is very much an example of a history that “resists historicisation and even acknowledgment.”87

Pandey points out the limits of the conventional archive and the ways in which the decision to exclude certain forms of knowledge and information as legitimate sources undermines historical study. This has the consequence of narrowing the tropes of possible enquiry through which history functions as a discipline, thereby silencing the voices of marginalised groups and removing the possibility of featuring their day to day experiences and lives within academic history. To overcome this he suggests that scholars should redefine and broaden the methodological toolkit available for historical enquiries into prejudice. He advocates investigating the “silences” within the public record in order to trace the ways in which day-to-day manifestations of prejudice are excluded from the traditional archive and by extension, from academic

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 85 Gyanendra Pandey, “Un-archived Histories: The ‘Mad’ and the ‘Trifling,’” Economic & Political Weekly 47, no.1 (January 2012): 37. 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid.

! 32! history.88 His approach offers us insights into the broader historiographical issues at work in any historical study of prejudice, fundamentally questioning accepted notions of the archive and what constitutes legitimate history.

Interviews yielded great insights into the sentiments and personal feelings of individuals whose lives were negatively impacted by caste practices, overcoming the silence of the archive. However, as with so many oral histories, these interviews take place long after the periods being mentioned, raising the issue of the fallibility of human memory, a difficulty that has already been extensively discussed in scholarly work related to the turn towards oral history and non-textual sources. However, the benefits of the oral history approach are rich. On the use of oral testimonies in his research on prostitutes in colonial Singapore, James Warren had the following to say:

The problems of selective bias, the fallibility of memory over time, and the question of verification of material are very real. However, the inherent difficulties in the use of oral history testimony are more than offset by the awesome power and wonder of language lifting the veil of silence from around the lives of these prostitutes.89

Similarly, the use of oral history reveals much about the lives of untouchables in Singapore and provides valuable indexes of a past that few wish to acknowledge. When dealing with histories from below, of marginalised and disempowered groups, it is important to acknowledge the irreducibility of cultural experiences, and to embrace the inter-locking complexities revealed by individual subjectivities. Paul Thomson reminds us that oral historians particularly are often “brought back from the grand patterns of… history to the awkwardly individual lives” which are its basis.90

Virginia Yans-McLaughlin raises an interesting point when she describes her own use of oral interviews in her study of Jewish and Italian immigrants. She argues that in her study she is not so much concerned with what is remembered in reconstructions of the self that occur in oral testimonies. Instead, on the symbolic level she analyses the ways in which these memories are themselves structured, while !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 88 Ibid., 41. 89 Warren, Ah Ku, 15. 90 Paul Thomson, The Voice of the Past: Oral History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 12.

! 33! as a historian, engaging herself with the task of exposing the social processes and contexts from which these accounts of the self emerge.”91 I have similarly adopted this approach in my own study. Similarly, Clare Anderson had limited sources to work with to construct the biographies of those who lived on the margins of colonial society in the Indian Ocean during the 19th Century. She argues that her biographies often lack a narrative beginning or ending and that this “incompleteness” is important, in that despite strong evidence of subaltern agency it reminds us of the “disciplinary intent and partiality of the archive, and ultimately of the unequal distribution of power in colonial societies.”92

The Oral History Centre of the National Archives of Singapore has been a particularly useful source for details about the lives of these individuals. Yet none of the oral histories available at the National Archives in Singapore that directly broach the topic of untouchability and caste involve an interview with an individual who identifies themselves as a member of the Adi Dravida community. The topic is almost entirely addressed from the perspective of other Indians. This too reflects how the erasure of untouchability was partially the result of a conscious attempt by former members of the Adi Dravida community to reject caste identities. A number of interviews conducted in Tamil do feature members of the former-Adi Dravida community. We can deduce this from the occupations and living areas that the interviewees describe, although these interviews do not broach the subject of caste directly, they too reveal the social conditions that were experienced by some people from these communities.

I have also relied on interviews I conducted with the former chairman of an Adi Dravida organisation, V. Thamizhmaraiyan, as well as former members of Dravidian social organisations in Singapore and others who recounted social memories from the 1920s to the late 1960s. The former chairman, V. Thamizhmaraiyan, shared rich anecdotes told to him by his father, father-in-law and other former untouchables who lived in Singapore from the 1920s, who are no longer alive.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 91 Virginia Yans-McLaughlin, “Metaphors of Self in History: Subjectivity, Oral Narrative, and Immigration Studies,” in Immigration Reconsidered: History, Sociology and Politics, ed. Virginia Yans-Maclauglin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 254. 92 Clare Anderson, Subaltern Lives: Biographies of Colonialism in the Indian Ocean World, 1790-1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 6.

! 34! The secondary literature about caste in Singapore and Malaysia in the 1970s is particularly valuable because it records the voices of many members of the Tamil Hindu community. Interviewees, most of whom are no longer alive today, often discuss the past with a certain amount of candor which is hard to elicit from interviewees in Singapore today, as untouchability and caste prejudices have become more contentious issues with time. A. Mani was the first scholar to focus a study on the caste identities of Singaporean Tamils based on fieldwork he conducted in the 1970s.93 He is probably also the only scholar to devote a sizeable section of his study to examining the caste attitudes of Tamil untouchables and those of other Hindus towards them. Mani’s methodology included surveys and interviews amongst two hundred members of four Tamil caste groups, including fifty members of the untouchable Adi Dravida castes.94 Since many members of the Indian community who have clear memories of caste practices before the Second World War are now deceased, his study, which featured interviews from some of these individuals, is a valuable source of anecdotal accounts about early caste practices and practices of exclusion relating to untouchability in Singapore. Other scholars such as Rajakrishnan Ramasamy have also conducted a study of caste attitudes amongst Malaysian Tamils in the 1970s that similarly provides important interview-based information.95

The Structure of the Study

The chapters in this study do not comprise an exhaustive account of untouchability in Singapore, but focus instead on selective themes and areas of enquiry. The present study is organised into six chapters followed by a conclusion. Across these chapters three main areas are explored that best reflect how the question of untouchable experience and untouchable identity evolution in Singapore was closely linked to wider circumstances and conditions. The three areas of focus are: the everday cultural experiences of untouchables, Tamils and members of the wider Indian community, the dynamics of intra-community relations between various Indian organisations, and external influences on the Indian community. The chapters highlight how the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 93 Mani, “Changing Caste-Structure.” 94 Ibid., v. 95 Ramasamy, Caste Consciousness.

! 35! interactions betweens these factors informed, and were informed by, the negotiation of various identity discourses.

The layout of the chapters also reflects four broad periods within the timeframe of study that were marked by the differing cultural orientations of Indian migrants. Between 1825 and the 1870s, the cultural landscape of Singapore amongst early settlers was highly syncretic, and the negotiation of caste was characterised by compromise and laxity. This was facilitated by loose transnational community surveillance, a high degree of inter-ethnic contact and the disruptive capacity of wage labour to challenge traditional caste hierarchies.

Caste practice became much more strongly enforced from the 1870s when Tamil labour migration increased significantly. Circular migration and transnational networks of village communities provided an impetus for the reintroduction of rules governing inter-caste relations. Although several difficulties complicated the introduction of caste in Singapore, caste-Hindu migrants successfully introduced caste practice onto the physical urban environment and within labour policies.

From the 1920s, the growth and spread of Indian nationalist and Dravidian nationalist ideology and socio-political linkages introduced a diasporic consciousness amongst the Indians in Singapore that discursively challenged caste identities in several ways. The Japanese Occupation of Malaya (1942-1945) also had a profound impact on caste by homogenising Indian identity.

The final period between the end of the war in 1945 to Singaporean independence in 1965 was a period marked by a very complex re-negotiation of identity in response to decolonisation and questions of loyalty and belonging. During this period an egalitarian and casteless Tamil ethnicity came to dominate identity narratives within the untouchable and wider Tamil community in response to the political situation in Malaya and the impact of the Dravidian movement in India, facilitating the erasure of untouchability in the public sphere.

! 36! The first chapter deals with penal transportation into Singapore, and the effects of liberal penal policies on the negotiation of caste amongst transmarine Indian convicts. By contrasting penal policies in India with those present in Singapore, I argue that the penal system in Singapore ruptured traditional caste hierarchies and afforded opportunities for untouchable convicts to transcend their caste identities. This chapter serves to highlight and contrast the social conditions present in the penal environment and in the wider Singaporean colony with the social conditions that feature in the later chapters, during which time public caste practice and untouchability were re- established in Singapore.

In the second chapter I examine colonial debates that surrounded Tamil labour migration into Malaya. By analysing debates about the low caste composition of Tamil labourers I establish that untouchable migrants made up a large proportion of Tamil labour migration. I investigate the reasons for untouchable migration, official attitudes to untouchable labourers and the difficult conditions faced by them in Malaya. I also explore the context behind discourse that linked overseas migration with the breakdown of caste and interrogate the extent to which this link was based on an actual decline of caste identity amongst Tamil migrants. Focusing on the Kangany system of labour recruitment in Malaya, I explore the ways in which migrants imposed caste practices within new labour relationships.

In the third chapter, I examine the everyday experiences of untouchable labourers using oral history sources, analysing the ways in which caste practices and caste identities were established, enforced and resisted by Tamil caste-Hindu and untouchable migrants in multi-ethnic environments in Singapore. I argue that caste relations were strengthened by networks of surveillance and a moral economy that was informed by the translocal identity orientation of migrants. With large numbers of Tamil migrants arriving from the same villages and regions in India, recognition of caste identities became easier through networks of surveillance that were created by circular migration and the frequent coming and goings of caste and kin members. Inter-caste interactions began to be increasingly policed, as caste Hindus perceived the impact that inter-caste relations overseas would have on social relations within communities back in India. As a result, although several structural limitations weakened caste identities in the public sphere, caste Hindus attempted to carve zones

! 37! of caste practice with a degree of success. Not only were physical areas of separation enacted in the urban built environment of Singapore as a result, with British acquiescence, caste also began to be replicated in the occupational specifications of Tamil labourers in the municipality. This increased the public visibility of untouchable identity within the Tamil community, and daily practices of discrimination entered into public life, although frequent conflicts demonstrate that untouchable communities actively resisted this.

Chapter four examines the introduction of a diasporic consciousness amongst Tamil migrants and the impact of new identity discourses on caste practice and the untouchable community during the 1920s and 1930s. During this period, the translocal orientation of Tamil migrants was widened, primarily in response to the spread of Indian nationalism and the Dravidian movement and their respective ideologies and identity discourses into Malaya. Migrants began to conceive of their identities in broader terms and came to see themselves as part of transnational “Tamil”, “Dravidian” and “Indian” communities. This ushered in a period in which Tamil migrants became part of diasporic imagined communities. Associations were formed in Malaya to advance the cause of Congress nationalism and the Dravidian social reform agenda ushered in by Periyar’s Self Respect Movement in India. These movements had a profound influence on the negotiation of untouchable identities in Malaya through the introduction and popularisation of anti-caste discourses and through the active support that leaders lent to the many Adi Dravida Sangams that had emerged in Malaya in the 1920s. Both movements competed to represent the Tamil labouring majority and promoted both a pan-Indian and pan-Tamil identity respectively.

Whilst addressing the welfare of untouchables as Indian labourers, I argue that Indian nationalists were reluctant to directly address the issue of caste, preferring to subordinate the concerns of untouchables to the need for encouraging Indian unity in diversity. Threatened by the emergence of a movement aimed at Tamil solidarity in Malaya, supporters of Indian nationalism encouraged Adi Dravidas to retain a separate and distinct identity as a subset of a larger pan-Indian identity. Within the Tamil Reform movement, the ending of caste and the abolition of untouchability were, in contrast, essential components of the way that Tamil identity was framed.

! 38! Tamil reformers encouraged the Tamil community to look beyond caste and religious differences and see themselves merely as Tamils and to adopt an egalitarian attitude to social relations. This provided a stronger discursive framework for Adi Dravida Tamils to fashion new identities.

Despite the appeal of Tamil reformist identity discourses, a large segment of the Adi Dravida community were reluctant to dissolve their separate subaltern subjectivities within a larger Tamil linguistic movement. This stemmed from the acknowledgement that separate untouchable identities remained politically and socially salient in India. Furthermore, the wider caste Hindu Tamil community in Singapore remained largely socially conservative and unwilling to embrace the Tamil reform movement’s social agenda during the 1930s, necessitating the continued need for the horizontal mobilisation of the untouchable community along caste lines. Although the untouchable community in Singapore began to increasingly favour the Tamil reform movement by the late 1930s, it was still divided between the Gandhian philosophy of the Indian Nationalist Congress, on the one hand, and the ideology of Periyar’s Self Respect Movement on the other.

In the fifth chapter I explore the effects of war and a near totalising discursive framework for a revolutionary pan-Indian identity that occurred in Singapore during the Japanese Occupation. I argue that a coercive climate of fear radically altered existing identity narratives resulting in the submergence of a Dravidian Tamil ethnic identity. I explore the impact of Japanese support for the Indian National Army and Indian Independence League on Indian society and argue that caste identities were also submerged during this period. I examine the effects of the occupation on untouchable labourers, studying the contrasting empowerment that accompanied enlistment in the INA with the devastating effects of mass deportations for Tamil labourers on the Thai-Burma Railway.

In the final chapter, I analyse the reason for the “gradual disappearance” of untouchability in Singapore’s public sphere. The chapter deals with the changing orientations of Indians in Malaya during an uncertain period of decolonisation in Malaya and the wider region. I focus primarily on the development of Tamil ethnic identity and the reasons why untouchable leaders chose to give up separate

! 39! untouchable subjectivities and to embrace a Tamil identity. Following India’s independence and the planned British withdrawal from Malaya, questions of future citizenship dominated the negotiation of identity, forcing Indians to reconfigure previous notions of homeland and belonging. To Indian migrants, the successive breakup of the British Empire ended the sense that Malaya was a part of “greater India.” The future of the Indian community in Singapore was now on a trajectory distinct from socio-political developments in India and was now firmly placed within the context of the political future of Malaya, in which they would exist as minorities. Between the late 1940s and 1960s, the region was in the grip of considerable political uncertainty. This period saw the rise of Malay nationalism, the beginnings of a Malayan communist insurgency, ’s undeclared war with Malaysia and the question of Singapore’s status within a newly formed Malaysian Federation.

I explore the ascendency of Dravidian Tamil ethnic identity within this regional context and the Singapore government’s attempts to police multi-racialism in Singapore. I argue that the changing orientation of migrants towards a future identification with Singapore facilitated the ending of caste practice and identities. I argue that Dravidian identity discourses heavily influenced the negotiation of Singaporean Tamil ethnicity, and that shifting orientations and loyalties similarly shaped these.

! 40! Chapter One Penal Transportation and Cultural Ruptures ! ! The presence of transported convicts was an important feature of Indian life in 19th century Singapore, and liberal penal policies had a substantial impact on the cultural orientation of Indian convicts. Excluding released individuals, many of whom settled permanently on the island, the Indian transmarine convict population averaged around two thousand persons annually for the years of convict settlement between 1825 and 1873.1 Convicts comprised a significant proportion of the total Indian population in Singapore during this period, constituting around twenty percent during the early 1870s when convict numbers were at their lowest in relation to the wider Indian community. The impact of penal policies therefore had wider ramification on Indian society in Singapore in the early 19th century, shaping a social context within which migrants negotiated caste and culture continuity. In this chapter I argue that for the many untouchables who were sent to Singapore as convicts, the penal environment that emerged provided opportunities for them to set aside the social disabilities that they previously experienced on account of their caste status, and to re-invent themselves with new identities that were facilitated by the discursive rationalisation and purpose of penal labour.

19th Century prisons in India were places where external cultural practices, including caste, were replicated and supported by colonial prison authorities that were anxious to avoid any potential social unrest that might have arisen from perceived threats to the existing status quo in wider Indian society. A prisoner’s caste could determine their clothing, prison rank and their assignment to ritually polluting tasks, as well as their access to special privileges. For untouchables in India, prison life was neither socially leveling, nor a site of transgressive cultural change.

In sharp contrast, overseas penal settlements like Singapore were environments where caste customs received little institutional buttressing and established caste hierarchies were destabilised. For the low caste and untouchable Hindu convicts who comprised

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 J. F. A. McNair, Prisoners Their Own Warders: A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits Settlements (Westminster: A. Constable and Co., 1899), 40.

! 41! the largest percentage of Indian convicts in Indian Ocean penal settlements, this provided opportunities for leaving behind caste-based social disabilities and constructing new identities.2 Since the prevailing discursive justifications for Indian penal transportation in the early 19th century included a prisoner’s loss of caste as a component of punishment within a transportation sentence, prison officials had a greater degree of latitude in ignoring caste as an ordering principle within Indian penal institutional policies in places like the Straits Settlements. This was also made possible by the fact that Indian convicts were cut off from surrounding kin and caste networks outside the prison. Unlike in India, there was little risk of social unrest following the contravention of caste protocol within the prison. As a result, in Singapore the prison system evolved in response to factors that were unique to the early colony and with little reference to the pre-existing social orders and contexts from which Indian convicts had arrived.

Indian transmarine convicts in Singapore were subject to a system of prison discipline and a labour regime that constituted a radical rupture with existing social norms. Under an evolving penal system, past social hierarchies were replaced by an egalitarian system of rankings that gave prisoners access to opportunities and privileges based on a complex series of factors. These included a prisoner’s behaviour in prison, the crimes committed and their aptitude for certain professions. Prisoners were placed within a system of standardised clothing, duties, rations and systems of advancement. With lengthy sentences and the breakdown of links with families and communities in India, the leveling effects of these prison policies posed a serious challenge to caste hierarchies. The ethnically heterogeneous environment of Singapore in the early 19th century was also one in which the indeterminate and fluid nature of ethnic identities provided the possibility not only for syncretic interaction

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 2 Clare Anderson has argued that low caste Hindus and tribal communities made up the largest percentage of Indian convicts in Indian Ocean penal settlements in general. Clare Anderson, “Convict Passages in the Indian Ocean: 1790-1860,” in Many Middle Passages: Forced Migration and the Making of the Modern World, eds. Emma Christopher, Cassandra Pybus and Marcus Rediker (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007), 130. Based on early 19th century Straits Settlement Factory records Kernial Singh Sandhu also argues that untouchables were present amongst a highly heterogeneous prison population: “Almost every strata of Indian society was represented amongst the convicts, including Benares brahmanas, Sikh and Dogra ksatriyas, Chettiar, Bengali and Parsi financiers and ryots and untouchables from various parts of the continent.” Kernial Singh Sandhu, “Tamil and Other Convicts in the Straits Settlements, A.D. 1790-1873,” in Proceedings of the First International Conference Seminar of Tamil Studies: Kuala Lumpur-Malaysia, April 1966 (Kuala Lumpur: International Association of Tamil Research, 1968-9), 200.

! 42! between Indian convicts and other racial communities, but also the potential for the creative reinvention of identity.

Working within tight fiscal and manpower constraints within the early colony, Singapore’s governing administrators were eager to turn the prison population into a labour force for infrastructure development and to provide public services that were essential for the colony. As a result of this, prisoners were given opportunities through occupational training within a relatively liberal prison environment, in which a system of incentives and rewards resulted in a relatively self-disciplining prison population, minimising the need for manpower-intensive forms of supervision and policing. The preparation of Indian convicts for life after their sentences in a capitalist economy as tradesmen and service providers further hastened the decline of caste, by removing previous associations between specific occupations and caste identity and by removing the symbolic dimension of inter-caste reciprocity associated with occupational and economic relationships, which were a common feature of rural life in India.

The penal system in Singapore provided a radical challenge to caste identities, and highlights the laxity and cultural compromise that characterised the initital period of Indian settlement in the British colony.

Indian Transmarine Convicts and British Notions of Caste ! ! Colonial authorities began recommending the transfer of Indian convicts to overseas colonies at the end of the 18th century.3 From its inception, transportation was bound up with specific ideas about the caste system and a belief in the universal salience of Brahmanical texts like the Manu Smriti (The Laws of Manu) and a widespread belief that crossing the ocean or kala pani (black water) led to a loss of caste for Hindus. Colonial authorities initially viewed this loss of caste and the resultant social exclusion as an additional element of punishment involved in the penal transportation

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 3 Sandhu, “Tamil and Other Convicts,” 197.

! 43! of high-caste Indian convicts. The potential loss of caste was seen as a powerful deterrent to crime.4

These ideas were also reflections of the beliefs held by many, though not all, Hindus; ideas that were further reinforced by British experiences with Indian troops from various parts of the subcontinent. For example, large numbers of Indian troops in the Bengal Native Army had deserted, mutinied and expressed reluctance to serve overseas or beyond “what they considered to be the confines of Hindustan,” which included areas beyond the Indus River.5 One such incident manifested in a mutiny of the 47th Regiment of the Bengal Army in Barrackpore in 1824, when sepoys feared that their superiors would force them to take a sea route to Chittagong during the First Anglo-Burmese war (1824-1826). Dread of the kala pani, taken to be a universal feature of Hindu religious life, came to strongly influence British policy in the 19th century, despite the fact that significant regional variations must have been apparent to individual administrators, immigration officials and ethnographers. The strength of the belief sometimes led to a failure on the part of the British to consider other explanations for specific occurrences. The fact that disturbances over territorial crossings did not happen in the Bombay and Madras armies, for example, was attributed to the lower caste composition of the sepoys, rather than the existence of stronger maritime cultures and different attitudes towards the physical crossing of imagined sacred boundaries in those regions.6 Thus, over time, the British authorities introduced allowances and concessions that granted recognition of these beliefs, which no doubt encouraged these ideas to spread and gain currency amongst Hindus to whom ocean crossings had limited religious relevance previously. By 1896, for example, Indian military contingents sent to Sudan were provisioned with tonnes of ‘sacred soil’ from India for caste Hindu soldiers to stand on while consuming their meals.7

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 4 Anderson, “The Politics of Convict Space,” 40. 5 Sita Ram Pandey, From Sepoy to Subedar: Being the Life and Adventures of Subedar Sita Ram, a Native Officer of the Bengal Army Written and Related by Himself (1873), ed. James Lunt (Delhi: Vikas Publications, 1970), 85. 6 Douglas M. Peers highlights that William Bentinck, the governor-general of India (1828-1835), was unsure if special considerations granted to the Bengal Army were necessary for the Madras army which had a higher proportion of lower caste sepoys. Douglas M. Peers, “‘The Habitual Nobility of Being’: British Officers and the Social Construction of the Bengal Army in the Early Nineteenth Century,” Modern Asian Studies 23, no. 3 (July 1991): 556. 7 “Sacred Soil,” The Straits Times, June 10, 1896, 3.

! 44!

Like many penal administrators, John McNair, the Superintendent of Convicts in Singapore in the 1850s, also held the view that transportation led to the loss of caste for Hindu convicts. He attributed the despondency of fresh arrivals to separation from kin and country and the loss of caste identity. Remarking on how freshly landed convicts, who were manacled for a mandatory three month period, ceased to view their fetters as a mark of degradation, he wrote that they were “so completely overwhelmed with the thought of banishment from their country and kindred” and that “to many men of caste… transportation alone was a severe punishment.”8

Clare Anderson, however, has convincingly argued that in reality, the prospect of losing caste had little to do with the fears that transportation conjured up for many convicts. Rather, many convicts were more afraid of the prospect of hard labour in an unknown, faraway place and of being cut off from familial connections.9 In fact, some convicts continued to harbor hopes that caste could be maintained during and after the voyage to Southeast Asian Penal settlements. Anderson provides as evidence for her argument sources that highlight incidents in which high caste Bengali convicts refused to eat communal meals on ships headed to Singapore.10 An Indian clerk, Shreekristna Wassoodewjee, also petitioned the government for special consideration with regards to his clothing, as well as eating and drinking arrangements, in order for him to maintain his caste while on route to Singapore as a convict in 1846.11 What such evidence suggests is that for convicts who were concerned with maintaining their caste, the journey itself did not necessarily carry with it the threat of its loss, and that transmarine convicts did not necessarily consider themselves as having lost their caste simply by virtue of overseas transportation. The attempt by convicts to negotiate caste privileges from penal authorities overseas, rather than merely being a reflection of the strength of religious sentiment, can be also read as an attempt to improve their personal circumstances by capitalising on the discursive construction of caste identity, particularly British assumptions about the rigidity of caste protocol in relation to trans-oceanic travel. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 8 McNair, Prisoners, 39-40. 9 Clare Anderson has also described how the authorities eventually came to realise that this was not a universal phenomenon and that many Indian convicts actually preferred transportation once returnees had dispelled fears about conditions overseas. Anderson, “The Politics of Convict Space,” 40-46. 10 Ibid., 42. 11 Ibid., 41-42.

! 45!

Ira Klein has argued that the 19th century Indian legal code maintained a ‘distinctive and inchoate combination of Westernizing and ‘Sanskritic’ features’, and that despite liberal reforms of the mid 1800s, customary law, tradition and the juridical centrality of the Dharmasastras limited efforts at reform.12 Penal policy in India also reflected the tension between the desire on the part of lawmakers to advance liberal rationalism on the one hand and to leave existing cultural practice un-tampered on the other. This was particularly applied to the issue of caste. The resulting encroachment of Sanskritic tradition in British penal practices in India not only influenced discursive understandings of caste amongst the British, but also stimulated Indian appreciation of the fact that caste sentiment and the related threat of social unrest insinuated limits to British power in Indian prisons.

Despite the discursive link drawn between ocean crossings and the loss of caste, colonial administrators in the colonies were not of the belief that caste solidarities simply disappeared and were actually aware that they persisted. William Butterworth, Singapore’s governor, from 1843 to 1855, cited caste as the reason why the initial attempt to issue standardised prison clothing to first class convicts in 1850 was met with resistance.13 Butterworth used this knowledge of caste divisions to support the deliberate mixing of various communal groups of prisoners, in an effort to prevent a coordinated uprising.14 McNair similarly wrote that the “admixture of caste and tribes…[provided] a very valuable corrective against a possible chance of insurrection” and served as “ a means of finding out (about) any serious mischief that might (have been)… brewing in the jail.”15 To illustrate his point about the usefulness of a communally divided prison population, he cited an example of a conflict that had arisen between Ramdasee and Mazahbee Sikh convicts.16 A dispute between a Maahbee and Ramdasee Sikh led to a physical confrontation and a subsequent investigation by the prison authorities. The Mazahbee Sikh was found to be at fault !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 12 Ira Klein, “Materialism, Mutiny and Modernization in British India”, Modern Asian Studies, 34, no.3 (July 2000): 573. 13 Clare Anderson, “Fashioning Identities: Convict Dress in Colonial South and Southeast Asia,” History Workshop Journal 52 (Autumn, 2001): 159. Prior to the standardisation of convict clothing, many convicts had their crimes and sentences tattooed on their foreheads. 14 W.J. Butterworth to A. Turnbull, 26 Feb. 1845, IOR P/142/37 (17 Sept. 1845). Quoted in Anderson, ‘Fashioning Identities,” 161. 15 McNair, Prisoners, 123. 16 Ibid.

! 46! and was placed in confinement. According to McNair’s account, Mazahbee Sikh convicts were offended by the judgment and plotted to kill the prison superintendent with a smuggled firearm. Their plans were thwarted at the final moment by information provided by a Parsee convict.17 In this account of the incident, McNair suggests that the Parsee’s decision to warn the superintendent was made possible by the communal divisions within the prison and the lack of an over-arching sense of solidarity amongst Indian convicts. The Mazahbee plan for revenge illustrates that convicts maintained group solidarities based on religious, caste and linguistic affinities that provided a source of support and security, and McNair’s account affirms the fact that British authorities recognised these solidarities and divisions. The dispute between low caste Mazahbee Sikhs who were associated with untouchable Hindu converts, and the higher caste Ramdasee Sikhs, is also indicative of the breakdown of traditional structures in the prison environment.18

From an administrative standpoint, transportation to the Straits entailed not so much the obliteration of caste identities, but an end to the right of convicts to claim special privileges denied to other convicts on the basis of caste hierarchy, as was the case in certain prisons in India.19 In India during the 19th century, caste and religion were having a significant impact on prison discipline and this resulted in a number of incidents of unrest. David Arnold has argued that the colonial state in India was unable to coerce Indian prisoners into submitting to new rules and restrictions that curbed caste, and that disturbances and unrest frequently spilled outside of the prison into neighbouring communities. He cites many examples of related violence throughout India and highlights the inability of several prison authorities to uniformly enforce new systems of discipline, a difficulty that was especially pronounced during the first sixty years of the nineteenth century.20 Prison disturbances of this nature

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 17 Ibid. 18 McNair claims that the Mazahbee Sikhs were planning a revenge attack on the Ramdasee Sikhs following the punishment of a Mazahbee who was blamed for provoking a fight between the two groups. Ibid. 19 The extent to which caste differences were disregarded seems particular to the Straits Settlements. Caste differences were respected when it came to organising labour in Mauritian penal communities and up until 1838 convicts were also messed according to caste in Burma. Pieris, Hidden Hands, 163. 20 David Arnold, “The Colonial Prison: Power, Knowledge and Penology in Nineteenth-Century India,” in Subaltern Studies VIII: Essays in Honour of Ranajit Guha, eds. David Arnold and David Hardiman (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), 151-3.

! 47! informed debates in India about whether or not penal policy should countenance caste and caste privileges, and colonial authorities expressed a range of opinions.21

Caste and Penal Policy in the Straits ! ! However, caste does not seem to have been a major consideration for penal administrators in the Straits Settlements who, like McNair, were often of the view that transportation itself lessened the validity of any potential requests made with regards to caste-based privileges. While administrators were aware that new convicts continued to look to cultural and religious affiliations within penal society, they were also convinced that the social and spiritual effects that accompanied the loss of caste were part of the punishment included in a transportation sentence. McNair wrote that being sent across the seas was for many Indian convicts a fate “worse than death itself, for it carried with it not only expulsion from caste, but (also)…a dread of pain and anguish in another existence.”22

Caste may have retained a limited significance, together with language, religion and ethnicity as boundary markers between horizontally situated collectives, but no legislation in Straits Settlement penal policy facilitated the retention of caste as a means of hierarchically organising Indian convicts. It is difficult to determine the precise caste and communal compositions of the transmarine convicts, but it is clear from examples like the Sikh dispute that aspects of caste identities were, in some cases, maintained by convicts, although mainly as a means of ensuring their safety in the penal environment through the expression of communal solidarities, as well as an avenue for trying to gain minor concessions from the British.23 It is also worth noting that after the incident involving the Sikhs, the Mazahbees group was broken up, with the leaders sent to and the rest kept under close supervision in Singapore,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 21 For a detailed account of the types of arguments that were being made for and against the consideration of caste difference in Indian prisons, refer to Pieris, Hidden Hands, 163. 22 McNair, Prisoners, 156. 23 Reasons of caste and religious sensitivities were also used for a period of time as justification for allowing prisoners to prepare their own meals.

! 48! highlighting that British prison authorities did not allow the formation and perpetuation of communal or caste solidarities that posed a threat to safety.24

The Convict Class System and the Allocation of Labour ! ! The limited retention of collectives based on previous affiliations did not result in the re-establishment of traditional hierarchies within the penal environment. 25 The uniform introduction of the convict class system according to Butterworth’s plans in 1845 formalised a merit-based system of promotions and a penal hierarchy that did not accommodate previous caste and class distinctions, and in fact constituted a serious challenge to traditional patterns of social organisation.

One factor that foreclosed avenues for the expression of hierarchy based on aspects of status or religion was the convict class system and its attendant clothing regulations.26 The implementation of this system indicates that high-caste prisoners had limited leverage, and that administrators were not under any substantial pressure to entertain appeals for caste privileges. The fact that the British authorities did not foresee a significant risk of unrest arising from the introduction of a new class system also supports the suggestion that high caste Hindus were a minority, or that the penal population was too heterogeneous for broad-based caste mobilisation. If this had not been the case, the potential danger of unrest would have been greatly enhanced given the considerable freedom of movement that the bulk of the convict population enjoyed, as well as the fact that convicts greatly outnumbered European prison staff and the police force, and most likely also outnumbered garrisoned troops from the Madras Native Infantry who were posted to Singapore after 1827.27 In fact the very !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 24 McNair, Prisoners, 125. 25 The diversity with regards to the varied regional origins of the convicts would also have made impossible the creation of any discernible hierarchies that would have been applicable across the penal population. 26 One area in which religious differences were expressed within the penal environment was in the provision of different food rations. During certain periods, owing to possible caste and religious sensitivities, prisoners were also allowed to prepare their own food. These concessions supported horizontal separation and the recognition of mere difference rather than hierarchy. 27 The Madras Native Infantry replaced the Bengal Native Infantry in Singapore in 1827. Rai, “Sepoys,” 11. In 1849, some years after the implementation of the convict class system, the entire police force in Singapore consisted of some 218 personnel. Charles Burton Buckley, An Anecdotal

! 49! small numbers of policemen and garrisoned Indian troops in Singapore was a perennial source of anxiety and concern amongst European settlers on the island.

The absence of a large security force on the island was the result of the substantial financial constraints faced by the Straits Government as the free trade upon which Singapore’s early growth was predicated also resulted in limited revenue streams for the government. Writing to the Indian government in 1859, the Governor of the Straits Settlements stated that the Municipal Commissioners of Singapore “were to all intents and purposes, bankrupt.”28 The weak fiscal position of the Straits colonies necessitated the adoption of a penal system that required minimal supervision and the minimal use of forms of coercion that were manpower intensive. The potential of unrest arising from this lack of manpower, however, was effectively managed by the principle of stratification that undergirded the convict class system. The introduction of tiers of relative privilege ensured the relative consent of large sections of the convict population. The potential threat of unrest was arguably quelled by the relative social isolation of the convicts. There were no significant communities of higher caste Hindus in Singapore that might have potentially viewed the uniform treatment of Indian convicts as a threat to the status quo.

Convicts were initially divided into four classes, before amendments to penal legislation in 1857 introduced an additional two tiers. These divisions were organised based on the severity of crimes, the length of sentences served and the perceived physical suitability of certain groups of convicts to various forms of manual labour. The possibility of inter-class mobility and an eventual release back into society served as an incentive for good behavior. The convict class system was largely organised in the following manner:

# First class: Described by McNair as being “trustworthy convicts,” first class convicts were granted tickets of leave and allowed to live on their !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! History of Old Times in Singapore (1902; repr., Singapore: Oxford Unviersity Press, 1984), 501. Anoma Pieris has noted that at one point there were only 6 European staff members involved in prison services and that European soldiers were too costly to be employed. Pieris, Hidden Hands, 16. By 1871, there was a mere 415 Indian troops station in Singapore. Dunlop et al., Census of the Straits Settlements, 1881 (Singapore: Straits Settlements Government Press), 4. 28 The Governor of Prince of Wales Island, Singapore and , to the Secretary of the , Fort William, July 4, 1959, No. 110-665d, National Archives of Singapore (NAS).

! 50! own outside penal settlements with considerable freedom. Individuals in this class would have already served 16 years of their term.29

# Second class: Comprised of both male and female convict petty officers. Convicts in this class were employed in hospitals and public offices or worked in the Convict Department as tindals (overseers) in various industries.30

# Third class: The third class was comprised of individuals who had successfully passed their probationary period in the fourth class upon arriving in Singapore. They were employed in roads and various other public works projects. Convicts in this class were addressed by name and were no longer referred to by the numbers they received upon landing on the island.31

# Fourth class: Fourth-class convicts were either fresh arrivals, or those demoted or promoted from other classes. Primarily term convicts and those convicted of less serious offences, these convicts were identified by number not by name, and worked in light irons.32

# Fifth class: Convicts in the fifth class were demoted from the higher classes for secondary offences in the settlement, or were the subject of special instructions from India due to the seriousness of their crimes. They were kept under strict surveillance to prevent escapes and worked in heavy irons.33

# Sixth class: The sixth class of convicts was reserved for invalid and aged convicts. Boys and certain female convicts were also placed within this class.34

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 29 McNair, Prisoners, 83. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. Pieris, Hidden Hands, 74.

! 51!

# Youth gang: McNair writes that young boys were transferred to a special work gang. Youths were probably separated from older male convicts to protect them from sexual assault.35

For untouchable convicts various aspects of the convict class system introduced by Butterworth in 1845 removed performative aspects of untouchability by severing the link between certain occupations and caste status.36 Sweeping and scavenging, tasks that were traditionally associated with untouchability, were allocated to the sixth class of convicts that was comprised of young boys, women, and elderly convicts. These tasks were considered light duties and the sixth class was created to allow penal authorities to put superannuated and disabled convicts to work in productive labour. Women and boys were sometimes also placed within this class depending on their physical abilities. Being in the sixth class did not carry the pejorative connotations associated with membership to the fifth or fourth classes. The presence of women in scavenging vocations was a source of controversy in jails in Bombay in 1886, but does not seem to have been an issue in Singapore.37

All convicts who resided within the gaol compounds had to also sweep and wash their living areas every morning.38 No provisions were made for assigning these duties to lower caste convicts on account of the ritual defilement associated with such work. This contrasted with the attitude adopted by the authorities in India where convicts belonging to the lower, sweeper castes were expected to perform their traditional caste-based duties in Indian jails. An untouchable Tamil association based in the Nilgiris for instance wrote an official petition in 1909 to the authorities, requesting the removal of an official jail regulation in the Madras Presidency that stated that untouchables in prison could be made to do any form of menial task or “tazhntha

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 35 Prisoners were initially divided into four classes until 1857 when two more classes were added. McNair, Prisoners, 83, 89; Anderson, “Fashioning Identities,” 159. 36 Plans for a standardised convict class system were laid out in Butterworth’s Code of Rules in 1845. Anderson, “Fashioning Identities,” 159. 37 Bombay Native Newspaper Reports, January – February 1882, quoted in Arnold, “Colonial Prison,” 173. 38 General Rules and Regulations for the Government and Guidance of the Officers of her Majesty’s Gaols at Prince of Wales Island, Singapore and Malacca (Singapore: Straits Settlement Government Press, 1861), 6.

! 52! vellai” (debased work), highlighting the continued codification of such practices into penal codes in Indian jails during the twentieth century.39

David Arnold argues that in Indian prisons, special allowances that were made to facilitate the retention of caste in the allocation of duties and tasks, replicated and extended “formal colonial recognition to the social hierarchy outside (the prison).”40 In Singapore, certain classes of convicts undertook various tasks that would have been considered ritually defiling for caste Hindus, but no official sources indicate that these tasks were allocated on the basis of caste. These included exhuming Malay burial grounds to free land for construction and road work, scavenging, cleaning graveyards, removing dead bodies from roads and killing stray dogs on the first three days of every month.41 Drumbeating (which involved contact with drum skins made of animal hide) was also considered an extremely defiling practice in South India and was associated with the ritual duties that Pariahs were required to perform at funerals.42 A report in the Singapore Free Press in 1848, however, shows that the Governor of Singapore made recommendations for third class convicts to walk through the jungles beating drums to drive tigers out of Singapore and across the Straits of Johore. The recommended allocation of this task to an entire class of convicts regardless of caste reflects the latitude that penal administrators had in Singapore to ignore elements of traditional practice that interfered with the uniform application of prison rules.43

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 39 G. Aloysius, ed., Iyothee Thassar Sinthanaigal, Part 1 (Palayamkottai: Folklore Resources and Research Centre, 1999), 185. 40 Arnold, “Colonial Prison,” 173. The government of India overturned an attempt by the Inspector General of Madras to make reconvicted prisoners perform certain manual tasks. Inspector-General of Jails, to Chief Sec., Madras, April 12, 1871, Madras Judicial Proceedings, 75, April 19, 1871 IOL, quoted in ibid. It was later decided that “reasonable allowance should be made for caste prejudice” when assigning labour duties in prison. The Madras Jail Manual (Madras, 1899), 121, quoted in ibid. 41 Pieris, Hidden Hands, 100. The bodies of murder victims along Singapore’s roads were a fairly common sight during the early years of settlement. Colonial observers attributed these deaths to weak governmental control and widespread robbery conducted by Chinese secret societies. John Turnbull Thomson, Some Glimpses into Life in the Far East (London: Richardson and Company, 1865), 203. 42 Traditionally this act was associated with the warding off of evil spirits. Funeral drum beating had such a performative significance that even much later in the twentieth century, Indian reformist groups in Singapore attempted to get the government to enact legislation banning the practice, as a means of changing social attitudes to untouchables. Adi Dravida organisations in Malaysia also encouraged the community to refuse to provide such services in Malaysian plantations as a strategy for social uplift. In Tamil Nadu today, some Pariah communities have attempted to subvert the negative symbolism attached to drumming and reclaim drumming as a symbol of pride. “Disorderly Scenes at Conference: Objection to “Derogatory” Description: Strong Opposition of Tamil Reform Party,” The Singapore Free Press Mercantile Advisor, January 1, 1936, 3; Chockalingam, “From Outcaste to Caste,” 151. 43 Buckley, Anecdotal History, 501. It is unclear if this was in fact enacted, but the suggestion by the Governor reveals that caste sensitivities were not an important consideration.

! 53! Other examples further illustrate this. Being detailed to a road gang was a mandatory requirement for newly arrived convicts and was part of an initial three-year probation period that was universally applied. Even convicts who had previous occupational experience that would have made them suitable candidates for more desirable vocations had to first complete a period of duty on Singapore’s roads.44 Sources also indicate that new convicts involved in road construction in Singapore would have come into frequent physical contact with dead bodies in pre-colonial burial sites. A government surveyor who was present in Singapore during the early years of the colony described the situation as follows:

Roads are recklessly carried through the bones of original native settlers, and crowded streets now traverse the sacred places where many of the Singapore primeval worthies are laid in their last homes…Such sights were often to be seen of fresh human bones and coffins and humus sticking out of the sand by the roadsides. A few days will suffice to convince strangers in Singapore that native burial grounds are to be met with in all directions.45

The ways in which tasks were assigned to various convicts in Singapore contrasts sharply with the allocation of labour described in David Arnold’s research on prisons in India. In many prisons in India labour was assigned in ways that took into account the former religious and cultural status of prisoners. According to Arnold, discussion on prison labour as early as 1796 concluded that to have compelled high-caste convicts to work in road gangs alongside “common criminals” would have been for them and their families “much more severe than a sentence of death.”46 Four decades later the Prison Discipline Committee of 1838 was of the opinion that: ! To force a man of a higher caste to work at any trade would disgrace him forever, and be in fact inflicting a dreadful punishment, not only on himself but on every member of his family. It would be looked upon as a barbarous cruelty, and excite nothing but indignation against the laws, in the strength of which the most dreadful crime would be forgotten.47

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 44 McNair, Prisoners, 90, 156. 45 Thomson, Glimpses, 280. 46 Arnold, “Colonial Prison,” 173. 47 Report of the Prison Discipline Committee (Calcutta: 1838), 106, quoted in ibid.

! 54! David Arnold’s work highlights the role of resistance in shaping the Indian prison system and he critiques Anand ’s earlier study of Bihari jails by arguing that the coercive power of the state was not as unequivocal as Anand suggests, but that prison policy was dictated by far more dialogical processes.48 The retention of the caste system within Indian prisons is an example of the dialogical negotiation of prison rules that occurred between higher caste prisoners and penal administrators.

In the Straits Settlement prisons, most notably in Singapore, both overwhelming coercive power and significant convict resistance were absent. There prison policy which took into account the isolation of convicts, appears to have been shaped by persuasion and the creation of consent through the introduction of relative privileges that were made accessible to most convicts. The class system was internally sustained through the creation tiers of convicts who benefitted from the system of relative privileges it offered. The considerable leeway that prison authorities had in Singapore to implement prison policies that had the potential to be culturally problematic was a reason that many prison policies were first applied in Singapore and other Straits penal settlements before being later brought over to India, after having proved relatively successful.49

The convict class system ensured that all convicts had similar opportunities to progress through the ranks and end up in a position of authority and relative power over other convicts, creating new systems of hierarchy. A colonial report indicates that the maintenance of discipline was “carried out almost entirely by prisoners themselves.” 50 Convicts who became warders were in charge of a group of subordinates and reported directly to a gaoler or turnkey. Convict warders thereby mediated the authority of the penal establishment and had authority over their charges through the power of complaint and the threat of punishment.51 The system of placing prisoners in positions of authority and making them responsible for other convicts !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 48 Ibid., 150. 49 This included standardised prison uniforms, which appeared in India in the 1860s after being implemented in the Straits Settlements. The practice of recruiting prisoners to run jails and employing prisoners as warders also spread from Malaya to Bengal as well as the rest of India. Anderson, “Fashioning Identities,” 163; Arnold, “Colonial Prison,” 154. 50 Further Papers Relating to the Improvement of Prison Discipline in the Colonies: In Continuation of C. 1338 of 1875 (London: Harrison, 1876), 140. 51 General Rules and Regulations for the Government and Guidance of the Officers of her Majesty’s Gaols at Prince of Wales Island, Singapore and Malacca, 13.

! 55! was replicated in Indian jails after its apparent success in Malaya. In India, however, owing to the proximity of the jails to surrounding communities and the threat of disturbances, as well as the fact that caste was countenanced in labour allocation and the dispensation of privileges, positions of authority almost certainly followed caste and religious lines.

Standardised Clothing ! ! In Singapore, the standardisation of convict clothing also dealt an important blow to caste sentiments by removing the links between clothing differentiation and caste privilege.52 The leveling effects of standardised clothing acted in concert with the egalitarianism underscoring the class system and the allocation of penal labour. In rural India, clothing has been a powerful indicator of caste status and continues to be used in many places as part of a system of symbols that represent shifting and contested caste-relations.53 In many parts of India during the 19th and early 20th centuries, untouchable males were not allowed to cover their chests, or wear clothing below the knee, this also extended to untouchable females in some cases.54 In other regions, untouchables would have had to remove footwear when passing caste-Hindu villages. More recently, untouchable groups have attempted to raise their status by rejecting the outward signifiers of their former subordination by strategically adopting symbols of modernity such as umbrellas or western style clothing.55 Writing to the British government regarding the Untouchability Abolition Bill in the 1930s, the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 52 Clare Anderson has written the only article that explores Indian convict clothing in detail. Anderson, “Fashioning Identities,” 152-74; Netto, Indians in Malaya, 16. 53 For example, refer to Emma Tarlo, Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). See also Bernard Cohn, “Cloth, Clothes, and Colonialism: India in the Nineteenth Century,” in Cloth and the Human Experience, eds. Annette B. Weiner and Jane Schneider (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1989), 303-353. 54 The Rev. J. Kearns from the Puthiamputhur Mission in Tinnevelly described how low caste women were afraid to cover their breasts as instructed by missionaries from the fear of getting beaten by the upper castes, who viewed such a covering as a violation of caste protocol. Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, The Mission Field: A Monthly Record of the Proceedings of The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, At Home and Abroad, vol. 2 (London: E Clay Printer, 1857), 44. 55 This practice has been documented extensively in sociological studies conducted in various parts of India. Thol. Thirumavalavan, the President of the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi, a Dalit party in Tamil Nadu has remarked that the leaders of his party have made an effort to appear in western-styled shirt and pants in public as a political act and as an assertion of resistance. Chockalingam, “From Outcaste to Caste,” 41.

! 56! President of The Southern Adi-Hindu Welfare Association noted that caste Hindus in remote villages considered it “an ill omen” and “a great crime” to find untouchables “holding umbrellas, wearing sandals, tying dhoties below the knee”, wearing gold and using clean cloth.56 The symbolic nature of clothing continues to be important, because within a system of graded inequality, clothing restrictions not only serve to symbolise existing differentials in power and status, but also often become a performative element of those differences, serving as an additional justification for prejudice against lower caste Hindus and untouchables. Ritual impurity and proximity rules are often buttressed by other notions of physical cleanliness and dirt and hence not only have untouchables historically been prevented from covering parts of their bodies, or wearing ‘Western clothes,’ they have also often been denied access to clean clothing.57 It is not surprising then that throughout the 19th and 20th centuries and even in some places today, communal violence and conflict has often resulted from attempts by lower castes to simply change their clothing.

Before the standardisation of clothing was enforced in the mid- 1800s, transported convicts would use clothes to indicate previous wealth and status, and would also use items of clothing to conduct barter trading. The introduction and enforcement of standardised clothing within colonial prisons in the Straits Settlements, however, served to powerfully reinforce the salience of the new social order and challenged previous bases for social hierarchy. As a convict ascended in the classes, convict clothing became of a progressively better quality and more accessorised, in accordance with the increased responsibilities that accompanied higher ranks. Clothing enabled the British authorities to clearly identify different classes of convicts and helped to offset the anxiety of a situation in which large numbers of convicts left the penal compound to work in public areas on a daily basis.

Clothing here, as elsewhere, carried with it other levels of meaning and significance for convicts and constituted a creative space for the expression of identity. Clare Anderson, for example, has examined the way in which convicts in used clothes to alter perceptions about themselves and their place in the colonial order in

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 56 Government of India, Legislative Assembly Department, Opinions of the Untouchability Abolition Bill, Paper No. III, Opinion Nos. 7-8, p. 73, IOR/L/PJ/7/686, BL. 57 Robert Deliége, The Untouchables of India (Michigan: Berg, 1999), 107-8.

! 57! order to fashion new identities. Anderson suggests that convicts in certain places would buy military uniforms in order to encourage the perception that they were sepoys.58

Figure 1. Convicts in various types of uniform. The top right image shows a convict from the fifth class. The top left image is of a Tindal Maistri of cart makers and wheelwrights. Both

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 58 Convicts in Mauritius would purchase and wear the uniforms of soldiers. Anderson, “Fashioning Identities,” 159.

! 58! bottom images are of second-class convicts. The convict on the bottom left was a senior petty officer. Source: McNair, Prisoners, 84, 86, 88, 90.

Amongst the local inhabitants of Singapore, Indian convicts were also associated with the military and with the British authorities and convicts cultivated this association. This was probably enhanced by the tendency of governors like Butterworth to dispatch convicts alongside police and soldiers to quell riots and disturbances.59 During Orfeur Cavanagh’s governorship, Indian convicts were even armed with rifles to hunt tigers.60 Anoma Pieris has also suggested that the reputation of convicts as “company servants” in Singapore was also enhanced by the placement of early convict settlements near military barracks.61

Asian settlers recognised the close links between Indian convicts and the British authorities, leading them to fear the former. This is evidenced by rumours spread during the period of convict settlement. On such rumour which was circulated amongst the Chinese community was that Indian convicts had been ordered by the Governor to waylay and kill people at night in order to collect their heads to appease a demon residing in St. Andrews Cathedral.62 This resulted in a period of public panic, and the authorities had to elicit the help of Chinese community leaders to calm the Chinese population.63 Other incidents and rumours during the 19th century point to the perception that the British authorities had granted Indian convicts the power to kill with impunity. Asian communities in Singapore also perceived British treatment of Indian convicts as preferential with regards to their exclusive right to partake in public processions and festivals.64 Anand Yang has also posited that transmarine convicts in Southeast Asia preferred to characterise themselves as Company ke naukar (servants of the company) rather than bandwars (prisoners).65 According to Yang, convicts preferred to view themselves as workers employed in long distance service, the term !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 59 William Henry Read, Play & Politics: Reminiscences of Malaya by an Old Resident (London: Wells Gardner, Darton & Co., 1901), 96. 60 Orfeur Cavanagh, Progress of the Straits Settlements, from 1859-60 and 1866-67 (Singapore: Straits Government Press, 1867), 57. 61 Pieris, Hidden Hands, 72. 62 McNair, Prisoners, 67. 63 Ibid., 67. This rumour was also the cause of panic amongst the Malay community. Thomson, Glimpses, 256. 64 Buckley, Anecdotal History, 505. 65 Anand A. Yang, “Indian Convict Workers in Southeast Asia in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries,” Journal of World History 14, no. 2 (June 2003): 183.

! 59! naukar carrying with it connotations of honourable service.66 The use of convicts for the carrying out of official duties no doubt helped to facilitate this self-perception.

These associations between Indian convicts and military authority were no doubt reinforced by the belts, buckles, sashes and insignia that accompanied higher class convict clothing, leading them to resemble military uniforms. Insofar as penal uniforms could be used creatively to enhance the status of convicts within the colony, then, they ceased to function as an instrument of uniformity, surveillance and discipline, and instead operated to enhance the convict’s position in society by visually situating them close to the British centre of power.

Beyond the impact of clothing and occupational specification, the convict class system further challenged previous social hierarchies and encouraged the creation of new identities through integration into the economy of the Straits Settlements.67 McNair’s description of the convict classes suggests a complex system of benefits and punishments that not only incentivised compliant behaviour, but also encouraged individual enterprise by allowing convicts to engage in wage labour. Individuals were selected for artisan labour and were provided with training. They received varying monetary allowances based on the degree of skill they displayed in their learned craft, as well as their productive output. The best workers for each month were not only rewarded financially, they were also awarded the title of Tindal Maistri and were given the responsibility of training newcomers.68 Convicts in the higher classes were also allowed to work for European settlers as salaried household servants and casual workers. There are many accounts of convicts displaying resourcefulness by illegally earning money outside of their prescribed occupational roles, with the tools and resources provided by the penal settlement. European residents complained of “nightly florics” in the jungle organised by convicts.69 Convicts would charge money for entry into these carnivalesque musical gatherings.70 Another letter to the Straits Times complained that a convict in charge of an elephant charged children for rides

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 66 McNair, Prisoners, 83. 67 Marriage policies encouraged convicts to settle in Singapore after the completion of their sentences. 68 McNair, Prisoners, 89. 69 Pieris, Hidden Hands, 77. 70 Ibid.

! 60! along a major road near the town.71 McNair also notes that some convicts amassed money from various forms of employment and became landowners after their sentences were completed.72

The psychological effects of a merit-based system of social hierarchy on the Indian penal population have yet to be explored in detail by historians, and indeed the dearth of documented evidence from the perspective of convicts themselves makes detailed accounts difficult. It is clear however that penal policy in Singapore provided suitable conditions for the erosion of traditional caste identities and social hierarchies by offering convicts social mobility and a chance to accumulate financial and social status through the class system and individual enterprise.

!

Reformative Labour Discourses: Implications on Policy and Identity ! ! It is interesting to note that, while the labour of Asian prisoners was being utilised outside the prison, European prisoners continued to be sequestered within. Clear distinctions were indeed made between European and Asian prisoners and there is no doubt that penal policies were guided by ideas of racial difference. Europeans were given better rations and exposed to far better living conditions but were generally kept in isolation in refractory cells and crucially, were not subject to outdoor labour in the view of the public.73 Pieris has contrasted the treatment of European prisoners and Asian prisoners in Singapore, citing these differences as an example of colonial beliefs in racial differences and the belief that Asian prisoners were as seen as being part of racial collectives. She argues that they were viewed as being incapable of “morality, reform, and discipline” and hence unsuited to the disciplinary innovations that Foucault has suggested signaled the fundamental shift in the focus of punishment

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 71 “Letter to the Editor of the Straits Times,” Straits Times Overland Journal, September 10, 1869, 4. 72 McNair, Prisoners, 40. 73 European rations featured far greater quantities and more variety than the rations given to Asian convicts. General Rules and Regulations for the Government and Guidance of the Officers of her Majesty’s Gaols at Prince of Wales Island, Singapore and Malacca, 4.

! 61! from a prisoner’s body to a prisoner’s soul in early modern prisons.74 The view that Asian prisoners required different forms of punishment on account of their racial incompatibility with more “enlightened” forms of reformative punishment was certainly held by individuals in the 19th century government in Singapore. For instance in his book detailing his time in Singapore a magistrate, W.H. Read, recounts telling an insubordinate English soldier that he would no longer consider him an Englishman and would punish him “as he would a Chinese or a native,” with two dozen strokes of the rattan (a wooden cane).75

I would argue, however, that while various British officials in Singapore held differing beliefs about the relation of race to various penal regimes, penal policies for Indian convicts, particularly the decision to subject Indian convicts to public labour were not determined by a prevailing belief in the psychological unsuitability of Asian labour for Benthamite innovations such as the cellular prison and the disciplining effects of isolation and panoptic supervision. On the contrary, many early prison authorities like McNair argued for the reformative potential of labour and occupational training and considered it a means to ensure effective convict reintegration into society. The discursive link that was made between individual reform and productive employment lent itself well to the economic climate and manpower requirements of the early colony in Singapore.

The vast majority of the island’s early infrastructural developments were made possible by a steady supply of forced convict labour. Not only was the early public works department almost entirely comprised of the Indian convict population, convicts were also employed in a vast array of other occupations and even served in the police force. Even though there were many critics of the policy and official opinion was split throughout the period of penal transportation in the Straits, convict labour was seen by many as a viable means of meeting the labour needs of the settlements. The provision of labour to British colonies appears to have been an important consideration for the Prison-Discipline Committee in the 1820s. 76

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 74 Pieris, Hidden Hands, 16. Following numerous complaints from European residents in Singapore, European convicts were no longer transported to the island after 1854. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979), 10. 75 Read, Play & Politics, 109-10 76 Yang, “Indian Convict Workers,” 195.

! 62! Governors across the Southeast Asian region in the early 19th century were requesting convict labour and cited the unaffordability of free labour at the time.77

Within this climate of economic necessity the views of individuals like McNair not only supplied a justification to a system of coerced labour, but also contributed to the specifically liberal character of penal policies involving labour. The liberal nature of penal policy emerged from the belief that individual reform of convicts could be obtained by employing them in labour under conditions in which individual convicts found work meaningful. This resulted in a system that did not support public associations between the convict body, public labour and notions of punishment. While carrying an element of danger and hard toil, public labour seems to have been quickly divested of the element of shame that accompanied other forms of punishment that targeted the Asian body, such as public flogging, that occurred at various periods on the island.78

The underlying links that were made between reform and transmarine convict labour informed policies that impacted the everyday lives of convicts in other ways, facilitating the introduction of wage labour as well as a system of benefits and incentives that were made available to higher class convicts. This in turn further shaped the ways in which external communities, which had daily contact with convicts, viewed them. It also shaped the ways that convicts viewed themselves, allowing them to assume a range of new identities as “company servants” or tradesmen.

Rather than being treated as part of racial collectives, the penal system in Singapore also combined public labour with recognition of a prisoner’s individuality. McNair refers to several prisoners by name in his rather detailed account of individual Indian convicts. We are also told that third class prisoners are referred to by their names after progressing from the fourth class, which suggests that the recognition of their individuality became a reward for good behaviour.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 77 Ibid., 195-6. 78 One instance occurred after public riots in 1872 when triangles for flogging were erected all over Singapore’s town centre. Ibid., 106.

! 63! Informed by imperial expansion in and the experiences of British convicts in the emerging settler colony, convict labour regimes in Singapore were not necessarily bound up with ideas about race, although racial considerations were always a corollary.79 McNair’s contemporaries, such as Edmund DuCane who had his earliest encounters with the penal system in Western Australia, were advocating for the employment of European prisoners in public works in other parts of the empire using similar justifications, highlighting that the employment of convicts in public labour was a heavily debated issue in penological discourses in the 19th century and that debates did not necessarily factor around notions of race.80

In New South Wales, Governor Lachlan Macquarie viewed European convict labour as a means to build up infrastructure and develop the colony, but also as a means to socialise convicts to become future citizens and to productively engage themselves in society after the completion of their sentences. The result of this dual focus was the similar enactment of liberal policies like the ticket of leave system.81 Just as in other penal colonies like Singapore, the success of convict reintegration into society in Australia as productively employed and often, wealthy individuals steadily eroded the deterrent effect of transportation sentencing.

In Singapore, numerous reasons were employed to justify not subjecting European prisoners to physical work in public. One such reason was the belief that the European physical constitution was not suited to hard labour in the equatorial climate.82 The cloistering of European prisoners however stemmed largely out of the perceived need to protect the image of Europeans on the island in the eyes of Asian settlers.83 The authorities felt that there was a need to maintain the dignity of race in order to support

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 79 Ibid., 95. 80 DuCane became Chairman of the Board in Convict Prisons in England in 1869. 81 Sean O’Toole, The History of Australian Corrections (: UNSW Press, 2006), 34, 41,55. 82 Yang, “Indian Convict Workers,” 191. 83 So great was this need that, we are told in an extraordinary account by John Thomson, of the arrangements that Governor Butterworth made for a young Papuan albino in Singapore to be clothed in European dress and given an apprenticeship in the engineers department of the Indian Navy on account of his white skin. The details of this account are limited, but Thomson suggests that the fact the boy was an Albino was clearly discernible to Europeans, and that Butterworth had political motivations for maintaining the pretense. He also records Butterworth saying that the boy needed to be provided for in keeping with his “caste” in reference to his status as an alleged European. Thomson, Glimpses, 302-6.

! 64! the myth of inherent British superiority.84 This also translated itself in other ways, such as the use of racially prescribed penal clothing, with Europeans generally dressed in European working class attire so as to distance them from the penal establishment in the eyes of the Asian population. Ascribing a belief in racial differences to the application of cellular penal regimes is therefore somewhat problematic and must be subject to qualifications. It is worth noting for instance that the Mazahbee Sikh tasked to kill the prison superintendent was placed in a refractory cell, as a form of added punishment after the plot was uncovered.85

After a wave of negative public sentiment stemming from fears about the Indian mutiny and a few incidents of public disturbances involving convicts, however, individuals who were against transportation were able to influence policy and to bring an end to the transmarine convict facilities on the island, which were subsequently relocated to the Andaman Islands.86 It was only with the opening up of new streams of labour in the late 19th century, that opponents of Singapore’s prison policies, including the vast majority of Singapore’s European civilian population, were able to have their criticisms of the colony’s penal policies taken into serious consideration. Critics during this period questioned the social freedoms that prisoners were experiencing and advocated a re-evaluation of the entire prison system along European lines.87 Local prisoners had until that time experienced the same conditions as transmarine convicts, and criticisms were leveled against what was viewed as the indulgent treatment of both these prisoners as well as the transmarine convicts. A prison commission in 1871, comprised of several leading figures in the police force, prison department and judiciary, submitted an appeal for prison reform and advocated a universal transition to the cellular system with an emphasis on the isolation of

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 84 Refer to Harald Fischer-Tiné, “Britain’s Other Civilizing Mission: Class Prejudice, European ‘Loaferism’ and the Workhouse-System in ,” Indian Economic & Social History Review 42, no. 3 (2005): 295-338. 85 McNair, Prisoners, 125. 86 For more information about negative public sentiment against the Indian transmarine convicts and the wider Indian community following the Indian Mutiny and other incidents in Singapore, refer to Rajesh Rai, “The 1857 Panic and the Fabrication of an Indian ‘Menace’ in Singapore,” Modern Asian Studies 47, no.2 (2013): 365-405. 87 Harry Ord, the Governor of the Straits Settlements between 1867 and 1873, acknowledged the difference that were inherent in the Straits Settlements penal system, but like his predecessors, supported those policies a denied a need for reform. Subsequent Governors like William Jervois (1875- 1877) were concerned with implementing more regimental disciplinary regimes. Further Papers Related to the Improvement of Prison Discipline in the Colonies, 140.

! 65! individual prisoners, and increased discipline.88 The financial costs associated with implementing cellular renovations to the prison infrastructure seems to have been an important consideration, also suggesting that the earlier implementation of such a system for transmarine convicts not seriously considered due to its financial unfeasibility.89

In 1873, Singapore dismantled its facilities for transmarine convicts. It is no coincidence that a ban on Indian labour migration to the Straits Settlements that came into effect in 1864 was reversed a year earlier in 1872, from which point Singapore began to take in large numbers of Tamil labourers who came to replace convicts as municipal workers. The practice of transporting Indian convicts to Singapore was inextricably imbricated with the labour requirements of the colony, which also shaped the liberal nature of penal policy.

The Effects of Penal Culture on the Reintegration of Convicts ! ! During the period that Singapore received Indian transmarine convicts – that is, from 1825 until the 1860s – a substantial proportion chose to stay on in the colony after the completion of their sentences. Unsystematic record keeping makes it difficult to determine the exact numbers of convicts who arrived in each of the Straits Settlements penal colonies, but Kernial Sandhu estimated that around 15,000 arrived in the Straits Settlements directly from India between 1790 and 1860. 90 Yang estimates that only 60 percent of convicts returned to India upon completing their sentences in the 1830s, and this number became much lower by the 1860s when “very few returned.”91 In the 1860s, up to 300 discharged prisoners were settling down in the Straits Settlements annually.92 Towards the end of penal settlement in Singapore

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 88 Papers Relating to the Improvement of Prison Discipline in the Colonies, (London: Harrison, 1875) 221-8. 89 A committee appointed to investigate the causes of an outbreak of violence in a Singaporean prison looked favourably on the cellular prison system but highlighted that it would require “a large outlay of money” to implement in Singapore. Further Papers Related to the Improvement of Prison Discipline in the Colonies, 137. 90 Sandhu, “Tamil and Other Convicts,” 199. 91 Yang, “Indian Convict Workers,” 200. 92 Sandhu, “Tamil and Other Convicts,” 204.

! 66! during the early 1870s, 1,815 transmarine convicts who were not involved in violent or serious crimes enjoyed a mass pardoning, which increased their overall numbers in Singaporean society.93 This opens up questions about the ways in which Indian convicts re-integrated into the wider society, as well as questions on the nature of cultural change that occurred within such societies as a result of the absorption of ex- convicts. Did caste re-emerge amongst Hindu ex-convicts or did caste in Indian society retain less significance as a result of the influence of ex-convicts?

Government sources are largely silent on the issue of the cultural effects of re- integration, but it is possible to suggest how this unfolded based on other available evidence. For example, McNair writes that some convicts went back to India but returned to the Straits Settlements to work after finding conditions in India “suddenly uncongenial.”94 This is suggestive of the cultural difficulties that ex-convicts may have faced while attempting to re-integrate into society in India. Not only would have some ex-convicts have been stigmatised, others from low caste backgrounds may have found social conditions regressive after years of being exposed to the leveling effects of the penal system in Singapore. The decision to return to the Straits Settlements also indicates the presence of significant pull factors, probably relating to the occupational opportunities present in the colony. A look at the range of occupations in which convicts were trained, for example, reveals a large number of skilled trades that would have resulted in self-employment and relative financial autonomy.95

The Straits Settlements Census Report of 1881 provides a breakdown of the categories of employment that Indians in Singapore were involved in for that year.96 It reveals something of the character of Indian society at the time, and it shows that a large percentage of Indian workers were self-employed in various forms of skilled labour. Many of the occupations correspond to skills learned in the penal environment such as firefighting, building, construction, industrial labouring, masonry, tailoring, carpentry and pottery amongst other vocations. Ex-convicts who had learned these !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 93 McNair, Prisoners, 144. These 1815 convicts were originally scheduled for transfer to the Andaman Islands after the closure of the penal settlement in Singapore in 1873. 94 Ibid. 95 Occupations included sandal making, tailoring, weaving, wheelwrighting and stone masonry amongst many others. Ibid. 96 Dunlop et al., Census 1881, 17.

! 67! skills would have been numbered amongst the workers enumerated in these categories. Other occupations such as cart and hackney carriage driving, and cattle keeping were directly associated with ex-convicts in colonial accounts. For low caste workers equipped with marketable new skills, economic relations and financial transactions would have been divested of the cultural and religious obligations that characterised labour relations in the rural Indian economy.97 This is a significant point of difference from the labourers who arrived in Malaya in great numbers from the 1870s onward. These labourers were often in financial debt to their Indian kanganies and overseers, reproducing relationships of dependency that reinforced traditional hierarchies, the effects of which will be more fully explored in later chapters. Significantly, untouchable labourers in Singapore were also almost exclusively employed in municipal labour vocations such as public cleansing which significantly reinforced their caste identities, and made these identities publically visible and salient.

Anand Yang posits that the shared labour experiences of Indian convicts radically broke down pre-existing social divisions and that a new kind of Indian identity was emphasised, one that was informed by encounters with other groups that transcended regional and socio-economic differences. 98 Indian convicts probably faced little difficulty in re-entering wider society or gaining a certain degree of acceptance after having spent extensive time in relatively open contact with civilian society. It is noted that a convict served as the priest for Singapore’s first Hindu temple, the Sri from 1864, which had close links to the merchant class, indicating that the social stigma of penal sentencing was hardly universal in the nineteenth century.99 This situation only changed in the early twentieth century when Indian communities in Singapore became anxious to end any association with a convict past.100 By the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 97 Anthony Reid has argued that the cultural dimension of servitude and obligation associated with wage labour made it unappealing for Southeast Asians as well. Anthony Reid, “Introduction: Slavery and Bondage in Southeast Asian History,” in Slavery, Bondage and Dependency in Southeast Asia, ed. Anthony Reid (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1983), 34. 98 Yang, “Indian Convict Workers,” 183. 99 Pieris, Hidden Hands, 164 100 In 1925, a proposal to name a road “Bombay Road” was rejected after an inquiry discovered that the name was offensive to the Indian community because it was associated with a pejorative term for Indian transmarine convicts. The road was also the site of a former burial ground. This example highlighted by Brenda Yeoh demonstrates the sensitivities of members of the Indian community towards an association with convicts. Brenda Yeoh, Contesting Space in Colonial Singapore: Power Relations and the Urban Built Environment (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2003), 227.

! 68! 1870s, European resentment about the presence of transmarine convicts in Singapore was tempered with the realisation that the expenses associated with the widespread utilisation of free labour far outweighed the social costs incurred during the period of convict labour.101 This led to a more favourable portrayal of convicts in the local press by those who desired a reinstatement of cheap convict labour. This portrayal contributed to positive public perceptions of ex-convicts.102

Hindu and especially low-caste ex-convicts settling into civilian society would have been influenced by their experiences with penal policies, and would have most likely been amenable to disregarding caste identity. It is unlikely, however, that caste Hindus in the wider Indian community, which was largely transient, would have mirrored this sentiment. Many were psychologically orientated towards India and inclined towards the maintenance of cultural continuities. Caste identity would have retained significance for transient merchant communities like the Chettiars for instance, who saw their stay in Singapore as temporary and usually returned to India for marriage after spending a number of years on the island. However the Indian community remained relatively small and diverse in the early half of the 19th century. Lacking was a critical mass of individuals from the same regions of India or of enclaves where public practices of caste could be actively policed or institutionalised. This was an additional factor which separated this period from the period after the 1870s when immigrant communities from specific villages and regions were present in sufficient numbers to facilitate a ‘translocal’ orientation and the carrying over of caste practices and hierarchies. Both Rajesh Rai and Fred Clothey use temple records and evidence from shrines and religious structures to argue that this period was characterised by a degree of cultural laxity and compromise.103 Rai suggests that the makeshift quality and admixture of regional traditions cobbled together in shrines and temples imply that religious arrangements in Singapore were viewed as temporary compromises. Rai further argues that the pragmatic needs in the colony made

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 101 “The Convict Question,” Straits Times Overland Journal, October 25, 1870, 3. 102 Convicts were portrayed as a disciplined, orderly and skilled workforce. Ibid. 103 Rajesh Rai, “Homogenisation and Fragmentation, Inclusivism and Exclusivism in the Development of Hinduism in Singapore,” South Asia Diaspora 1, no. 1 (March 2009): 5-7; Clothey, Ritualizing, 58- 64.

! 69! cooperation between different Hindus necessary, and that caste and regional differences were temporarily set aside.104

European writers have noted caste-conscious attitudes amongst Indians in the Straits Settlements who were employed in white-collar jobs and of the private nature of caste observance during this earlier period.105 J.T Thomson noted that his accountant in Penang, Ramasamy Pillai, was proud of his high caste status and recounted the efforts that Ramasamy would go through to obtain food that was permissible according to his caste rules from his brother’s wife:

Ramasamy’s brother’s house was at Sungei Puyoh, a distance a five miles, and the way to it was through scrub infested with robbers and wild animals; yet did this lonely Hindoo trudge over the distance morning and evening, after the labours of the day, and during the dark, guarded only by a long dirk, which he clutched in his right hand, ready for defence.106

In Thomson’s account Ramasamy is presented as an extremely caste-conscious individual who is proud of the “caste-marks” on his forehead and eats in private, mirroring Brahmanical caste protocols.107 Yet he is also presented as an object of ridicule amongst others who belittle his caste rules or are angered by his high- handedness. 108 Ramasamy is presented as an isolated figure, forced to compartmentalize his religious identity and relegate his caste observances to the private sphere. His respect for caste rules is reinforced by the proximity of close family members, but the other non-Hindus who surround him do not recognize his caste status. Thomson noted that this was the price Ramasamy paid to reside in a land where “his customs were not respected, nor his laws enforced.”109

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 104 Rai, “Homogenisation and Fragmentation,” 5-6. 105 Ramasamy is described as being proud of his caste and declining to associate with Malays and other races on account of his caste sensitivities. Thomson, Glimpses, 174. 106 Ibid. 107 Ibid., 173-4. 108 In one incident, a Malay man who is rejected rudely by Ramasamy after asking for legal assistance on behalf of his relative is on the verge of stabbing Ramasamy with his kris (a Malay dagger), before being stopped by bystanders. Ibid., 176. 109 Ibid., 180.

! 70! In the absence of rigid religious institutions and relationships of dependency, religious claims to authority and status would have been tenuous for those who were not directly involved in priestly duties or did not contribute funds for shrines, temples and festivals. Although communities of high caste clerical workers and merchants maintained caste identities to a certain degree, there would have been little incentive for ex-convicts to retain caste hierarchy if they had lost familial connections and intended to stay permanently on the island. Furthermore, there would not have been many mechanisms to enforce caste performativity, since many ex-convicts were not in relationships of financial dependency or social subservience to these other groups of Indians. Divisions between different groups of Indians from various religious and ethnic communities were also less rigid before an increase in Indian immigrant numbers saw the introduction of more rigid boundaries.110 The sense of expanded community that accompanied weakened boundaries would no doubt also have widened the range of identity resources available to Hindus from traditionally low positions in their original communities.

The skewed gender ratio and the absence of extended kinship networks would have also undermined the retention of caste by limiting the marriage options of permanent and long-term settlers. Indian female convicts who were transported to Singapore until 1850 were encouraged to marry and settle down on the island and were advanced quickly through the class system with this purpose in mind, since higher class convicts were permitted to marry.111 Many Indian convicts, especially Muslims, simply married Malay women and formed mixed race communities, merging into the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 110 An example of the syncretism between Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs was the common veneration of the spot where Bhai Maharaj Singh was cremated in Singapore. Tan Li Jen writes that the respective beliefs and symbols of each community were grafted on the site during that period. Tan Li Jen, “Bhai Maharaj Singh and the Making of a ‘Model Minority,” in The South Asian Diaspora: Transnational Networks and Changing Identities, eds. Rajesh Rai and Peter Reeves (Oxon: Routledge, 2009), 187. Maharaj Singh was an anti-British Sikh revolutionary who was transported to Singapore in 1850 and died 6 years later due to health complications incurred during his incarceration. “Death of the Seihk Gooroo,” Straits Times, July 8, 1856, 4. 111 Pieris, Hidden Hands, 142. This figure only includes individuals that identified themselves to census enumerators as Jawi Peranakans, and does not include those who might have married women of other races and yet identified themselves as Indians while assimilating into other communities. communities were larger in places like Penang where the community numbered 2000 although it is difficult to determine the flows of individuals between Straits Settlement colonies. The Jawi Peranakan community was fairly successful socio-economically and the community in Singapore produced the first newspaper in Malaya in 1874. Dunlop et al., Census, 42.

! 71! Jawi Peranakan community, which by 1880 comprised some 762 individuals in Singapore.112

For untouchable convicts, social conditions in the penal environment provided an avenue to leave behind their caste identities. It is possible that many untouchable convicts who survived the harsh working environment and negotiated the loss of their communities saw their social conditions improve. They would have been afforded the same opportunities as all other convicts to learn trades, earn incomes, rise through the convict class system and even become warders themselves. Those who completed their sentences were more often than not equipped with valuable trade skills acquired during their time as convicts. With sufficient qualifications, one might argue that the penal system in Singapore and other Straits colonies provided radically liberating opportunities for low caste and untouchable Hindus, opportunities that would not have been available in rural communities in India. This is not to suggest that sentences were pleasant for convicts. The severe mental strain associated with penal transportation is reflected by the number of deaths attributed by authorities to “nostalgia”, “love of country” and “mental depression.”113

Ex-convicts who made it to the end of their sentences and chose to stay in Singapore were able to merge into the general population with relative success. The Singapore Free Press reported in 1884 that:

Many of the released convicts are living in Singapore as cart owners, milk- sellers, road contractors and so on. Many of them are comfortably off, but are growing fewer and fewer year by year, and their places will never be filled by that class again.114

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 112 Yang, “Indian Convict Workers,” 184. Dunlop et al., Census 1881, iv. 113 Sandhu, “Tamil and Other Convicts,” 203; McNair, Prisoners, 156. These reasons were cited alongside climate, diet and work conditions, which suggests that they were based on genuine observations of mental strain rather than being an attempt by the authorities to hide poor living conditions. Death rates amongst transmarine convicts in Straits Settlements general were relatively high throughout the period of penal transportation and in some years exceeded the number of arrivals. For some of the figures refer to ibid., 203. 114 Quoted in R.B. Krishnan, Indians in Malaya: A Pageant of Greater India (Singapore: The Malayan Publishers, 1936), 18.

! 72! The emphasis on the decreasing numbers of convicts underscores the fact that they constituted a minority in wider Indian society, especially towards the end of the 19th century, when new waves of Indian immigrants were landing in Singapore. In that sense, the different cultural orientations of these convicts would have had an increasingly limited impact on wider Indian communities.

It is possible that ex-convicts simply began to form new communities that were culturally distinct. Many of the convicts who did manage to find Indian spouses and formed families would later have descendants who identified themselves as part of the “Straits-born” Indian community. The Straits-born community saw itself as separate from their Indian immigrant contemporaries and the community had different attitudes towards cultural practices like caste that signal the cultural orientations that were passed down through these family lines.115 R.B. Krishan, the editor of The Indian newspaper, noted that many Straits-born Indian families in the 1930s were descended from these convicts.116 He described Malayan-born Indians as having very little connections with India and as being unable to read or write Indian languages. He also described the Malayan Indian as being ignorant or dismissive of “the silly notions of caste and creed held across the Bay”, and of also being free from the “communal bickerings so much characteristic of his countrymen in India.”117 The lack of caste- consciousness amongst Hindu Straits-born Indians suggests the possibility that some members of the community were descended from low-caste backgrounds. The loss of competency in Indian languages, and in some cases the rejection of Indian clothing, also suggests periods of cultural separation from other Indian communities and syncretic contact with other ethnic groups. 118 Although the Straits-born Indian community was largely uninvolved in the early twentieth century reform movements that aimed to alleviate the social disabilities of low caste and untouchable labourers, they nevertheless served as an alternate reference point for these migrants. They did

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 115 Children of Indian immigrants born in Malaya were not considered “Straits-born” and the term seems to have applied most commonly to individuals whose families had been in Malaya across multiple generations. 116 Krishnan, Indians in Malaya, 18. 117 Ibid., 29. 118 Former Singaporean President Sellapan Ramanathan, recalls that the Straits-born community to which he belonged recognized itself as culturally distinct from other Indians and that his mother and sisters would wear Malay-styled instead of saris. Sellapan Ramanathan, interview by author, February 16, 2011.

! 73! not practice caste-based discrimination in their contact with untouchable migrants, some of whom lived with and worked for Straits-born families.119

Liberal Legacies and Changing Constitution of Indian Society

In many ways penal policies in Singapore extended the logic of liberalism that characterised British legal codes on the island. The ethnic heterogeneity of Singapore had earlier allowed to experiment with enlightenment ideas, advocating uniformity before the law and doing away with the legal recognition of customary practices in many areas of legislation.120 This was possible because the indigenous Malays possessed little political leverage and claims to cultural rights were perceived to be much weaker for non-indigenous Indian and Chinese communities. The discursive construction of Indian transmarine convicts and their status as non-native minorities within an ethnically plural overseas environment enabled penal authorities to resist acquiescing to the facilitation of caste-based privileges in the prison environment. The absence of disturbances by convicts on account of this, not only emboldened penal authorities in India to phase in similar practices, but also illustrated that the application of a uniform legal code across the diverse population of Singapore was possible without the need for separate systems.

As I will discuss in a later chapter, the legal environment in Singapore continued to militate against caste privileges by stressing uniformity before the law, although caste Hindu labour migrants attempted to resist this and other structural limitations placed on caste practice in a number of ways. The later acquiescence of British authorities to caste Hindu attempts to institutionalise caste hierarchies and untouchability within labour practices provides one example of the evolving relationship that the authorities had with the Indian community as a result of rapid changes to its nature and constitution. The beginning of large scale Tamil labour migration into Singapore ushered in a new period in which a culture of compromise and laxity gave way to !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 119 Ibid. 120 In proposing a uniform law, Raffles advocated a period of transition in which the courts would adopt a conciliatory and soft approach to “kindly expose” the “erroneous tendencies” of native customs through “humane and patient consideration.” He was in this case referring specifically to illiberal practices such as slavery. Thomas Stamford Raffles, Singapore: Local Laws and Institutions (London: Cox & Baylie, 1824), 28.

! 74! more rigid sense of caste consciousness and the introduction of untouchability as a public practice. It is to this next phase that the coming chapters will turn.

! 75! Chapter Two

Characteristics of Indian Labour Migration and the Introduction of Caste Practice: Policies, Discourse and Social Effects from the Late 19th to the Early 20th Centuries

From the 1870s, Tamils began to enter Singapore and other parts of Malaya in great numbers as menial labourers, the majority working in plantations and as municipal workers in urban centres. The entry of these labourers fundamentally changed the character of Indian society in Malaya and their arrival saw the beginning of a period during which caste attitudes amongst Hindus in Singapore were strengthened. Not only were public practices associated with untouchability established, but low caste and untouchable Tamils also became a salient and highly visible category of migrant.

During this period colonial authorities vigorously debated many aspects of Indian labour migration. In an effort to facilitate, stem or influence the character of labour migration, governments, planters and other parties argued about the cultural effects of migration, the conditions faced by labour migrants as well as the characteristics of the ideal migrant. The resulting discourses that evolved from these debates were often focused on the issue of caste as a social practice and as an identity marker amongst migrants. In this chapter I analyse these discourses to first argue that untouchables comprised a significant proportion of early Tamil labour migration into Malaya. Although many scholarly studies have alluded to the high numbers of untouchable immigrants who arrived during this period, not much evidence has been presented to support these claims. This instability has created an opening for individuals and interest groups to either deny that untouchables arrived in significant numbers, or to downplay the discomforting significance of caste in the region’s past.1 It is important !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 This is of particular significance to the controversy surrounding the novel Interlok in 2011. The opposition to references in the novel to untouchable immigrants by members of the Malaysian Tamil community suggested that the experiences of untouchables did not comprise a significant element of conceptions of Tamil migrant histories. Interestingly, an interviewee revealed that former untouchables in Malaysia who he had been in contact with did not object to the story. Rather, the interviewee’s contacts suggested that the loudest protests emanated from higher caste Hindus who did not wish to be ‘tarnished’ by these associations. V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 24, 2011.

! 76! not only to demonstrate that untouchables arrived in high numbers but to understand the factors which led to these groups undertaking overseas migration. I argue that being a particularly vulnerable social group, untouchables were amongst the first Tamils to travel to Malaya for labour during periods of famine and hardship in India. Early untouchable migrants faced difficult conditions in Malaya and that authorities utilised the low caste identities of migrants to attribute the high rates of debilitations and death to the essential physical constitutions of migrants rather than the inadequacy of protective legislation.

Many of the discourses that surrounded Indian labour migration into Malaya featured the belief that the overseas journey led to the erosion of caste identity. In this chapter I explore the context behind these assumptions and probe the degree to which migration destabilised caste. By using one common feature of the labour recruitment system in Malaya, the Kangany system, I argue that structural factors created spaces in which Hindu Tamil migrants were able to re-assert caste hierarchies and values, against the destabilising pressures of wage labour and uniform occupational conditions. In contrast to the passive and malleable Indian migrant of prevailing colonial discourse, whose caste consciousness was highly susceptible to the influence of overarching policy, I argue that migrants adapted to the overseas environment and contested issues of caste, asserting or challenging their traditional roles within the caste system.

Immigration Trends, Indian Labour Welfare and Governmental Differences

The reinforcement of strong cultural continuities between India and Singapore via the mechanism of caste was accompanied by great changes in the nature of Indian labour migration to Singapore, and significant demographic and cultural changes to the Indian immigrant population. Indentured and free labourers had migrated in relatively small numbers since the 1830s, but began to come to Malaya in much greater numbers from the 1870s. This led to the expansion and demographic evolution of the Indian community, which shifted from having a Muslim majority, towards becoming

! 77! increasingly more Hindu and Tamil in character.2 Just as the abolition of slavery had facilitated the widespread implementation of indentured labour in British colonies from the early part of the 19th century, the end of penal transportation to Southeast Asia in the later half of the 19th century created an acute labour shortage, necessitating new forms of labour migration to Singapore to meet the growing requirements of the colony. Following the end of penal transportation and the de-linking of the prison system from the public works department, the government of the Straits Settlements found it necessary to bring in large numbers of South Indian workers for municipal labour. Planting interests also intervened to apply pressure on the Straits Settlements governments to meet the labour requirements of a burgeoning rubber industry.3

The separation of the Straits Settlements from the Government of India and the increased autonomy it gained as a crown colony in 1867 introduced a divergence between the governmental interests of the Indian and Straits Settlements authorities that complicated the process of migration between India and Malaya.4 The often divergent interests of both governments with regards to Indian labour migration was also accompanied by considerable public debate and pressure from missionaries, planters, Indian elites and other interest groups that had a stake in the politics, economics and social consequences of Indian migration. The discourses embedded in the correspondence, opinions and editorials that were created around this issue are revealing of the conditions faced daily by Indian labourers, as well as their attitudes to caste. This chapter will explore some of these views in greater detail.

The government in India was under political pressure from evangelical groups, British parliamentarians and Indian public opinion to ensure that Indian labourers sent !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 2 Raffles’ early town planning which apportioned land for Chulias or South Indian Muslims near Singapore River evidences the predominance of Muslims amongst Indians in early Singapore. Helen Fuji Moto has also argued that Indian Muslims from the Malabar and Coromandel Coast were the largest Indian community in Singapore until the 1880s, when indentured Hindus outnumbered them. Helen Fujimoto, The South Indian Muslim Community and the Evolution of the Jawi Peranakan in Penang up to 1948 (Tokyo: Tokyo Gaikokugo Daigaku, 1988), 29. Indian Hindus continued to significantly outnumber Indian Muslims throughout Malaya. The author of the British Malayan Census of 1921 noted that there were 838 Hindus for every 1000 Indians in Malaya. J.E. Nathan, The Census of : The Straits Settlements, Federated Malay States and Protected States of Jahore, Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan, Tregganu and Brunei, 1921 (London: Waterlow & Sonds Limited, 1922), 104. 3 The growth of the rubber industry, required intensive manual labour and was not suited to mechanization. 4 Minute by His Excellency the Right Honourable Governor General, Home Department Proceedings 1867, NAB 1671, NAS.

! 78! overseas were treated well. The government of India would frequently legislate immigration restrictions and propose total freezes on travel whenever it became politically expedient to do so. After the separation of the Straits Settlements from the Indian government in 1867, authorities in India began to strictly enforce an Act of Parliament from three years prior that prohibited the emigration of Indian labour to the settlements. The emigration of Indian labour only became legalized again in 1872.5 It was only a year prior, in 1871, that untouchables were officially classified as a separate class of Hindus in the first Indian population census, although they would continue to be largely invisible in immigration records in the Straits Settlements.6 In the first decade following the easing of immigration restrictions, the total Indian population in Singapore grew only marginally, as pardoned convicts were allowed to return to India and garrisoned Indian sepoys were withdrawn during this period.7

In 1881 government officials from the Colonial Office and the Straits Settlement authority in Singapore exchanged a series of letters that are indicative of the pressures facing both governments over the treatment of Indian labour migrants. They reveal the hardships faced by Indian labour migrants during this period. The letters discussed the deaths of some Indian labourers and the “deplorable” physical condition of the survivors during their return voyage to Negapatam, after spending a few months in the Straits Settlements. These letters indicate that officials working for the Government of India were considering a complete suspension of labour migration to the Straits Settlements, after noting the deaths of some of the labourers and the critical physical condition of the survivors, some of whom were blinded from untreated corneal inflammation.8 This also highlights the tenuous and often shifting nature of Malayan immigration policy towards Indians during the 1870s and early 1880s. The political pressures that influenced the Indian government’s attitude to Indian emigration were evident in the restrictions that were applied to other colonies as

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 5 Arasaratnam, Indians in Malaysia. 6 Charsley, “Untouchable,” 5. In other parts of Malaya, Indian immigrants who were not employed in the labouring professions could apply for certificates in order to be exempt from employment restrictions. These certificates sometimes recorded the caste of these immigrants. Emigration to Johore, a Protected Native State Adjoining the Straits Settlements; An Enactment for the Protection of Indian Immigrants, November 25, 1885, p. 3, IOR/L/PJ/165, File 2208, BL. 7 Dunlop et al., Census 1881, 5. 8 “Deplorable Condition’ of 18 immigrants Returning to Negapatam on the SS C T Hook,” February 10, 1881, IOR/L/PJ/6/32, File 222, BL.

! 79! well. 9 Imperial interests were not monolithic and often competition rather than bureaucratic harmonization marked the formation of policy between British colonies. As a result, the mechanisms for organising large flows of Indian labour throughout the British Empire evolved as they were continuously debated.

As a separate government, in 1867 the Straits Settlements authorities were under pressure to maintain labour flows by persuading critics about the appropriateness of the working conditions, living standards and general wellbeing of Indian labouring migrants. The Straits Settlements authorities also worked together with planting interests and government departments that required manual labour to create policies and numerous administrative departments, senior posts and mechanisms to ensure that the safety and wellbeing of immigrant labourers was seen to be adequately protected. This resulted in strong governmental control of many aspects of the lives of Indian labour migrants.

However, the adequacy of the protections afforded to Indian labourers is contestable. Sunil Amrith has argued that the main aim of several administrative reforms on both sides of the Indian Ocean was the tightening of immigration legislation, enabling the authorities to more convincingly establish the free will and intentions of Indian immigrants who planned to work overseas. 10 This was intended to protect the government against accusations of facilitating involuntary labour and abuse. To a lesser extent, granting official recognition to the Indian labourer as a free and rational agent operating in response to market forces also narrowed official responsibilities. The Straits Government was relatively successful in its efforts to assuage the concerns of the Indian government and enjoyed periods of relatively low intervention from the Indian authorities after 1885, with legislative changes to the Immigration Ordinance that saw interference from Indian State authorities being “virtually ceased”. This lasted until at least 1938, when the Indian Government banned large scale assisted

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 9 This became more pronounced as Indian nationalism, as a political ideology, began to gain traction in India. In a dispatch to the Colonial Office in 1915, John Chancellor, the Governor of Mauritius at the time, acknowledged the difficult political situation in India, while making a plea for Indian labour in Mauritius. Confidential Dispatch from J. R. Chancellor to Colonial Office, November 8, 1915, CO 571/3, National Archives, UK. , a leading figure in the Indian National Congress, spoke out against the conditions of Indian labourers overseas in 1912, calling it “degrading from a national point of view.” Amrith, “Indians Overseas,” 244. 10 Ibid., 235.

! 80! migration to the Straits Settlements at the behest of the Central Indian Association of Malaya. 11 In 1885, steamship fares were lowered substantially as a result of competition between two major steamship companies, and in 1887 a steamship subsidy was enacted by the Straits Settlements government for the Negapatnam line of steamers, making it cheaper to import Tamil labour, resulting in an increase in immigration.12 Between 1880 and 1887, Frederick Weld, the Governor of the Straits Settlements, was also keen to encourage Indian immigration as an important counter to the numerical dominance of the Chinese in the colonies.

Push Factors for Untouchable Labour Migrants

Amongst this new wave of Tamil immigrants, it is evident from a range of factors that a high proportion comprised members of the untouchable castes. The immigration of untouchables was expedited by pressures resulting from the implementation of the Ryotwari system of agricultural taxation introduced in the Madras Presidency by Thomas Munro in 1820. This system dictated that revenue was settled on the size of land, rather than on the quantity of produce, so that payments were compulsory regardless of the success or failure or respective harvests.13 This not only drove many

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 11 Emigration to Straits Settlements: Report for 1885, IOR/L/PJ/6/178, File 903, BL; Leslie Netto, Passage of Indians: 1923-2003 (Singapore: Singapore Indian Association, 2003), 58. The Indian Government also banned indentured labour to Malaya in 1910, but this had little effect on Indian migration to Singapore, where indentured migration was always a negligible component of total Indian immigration. The Central Indian Association of Malaya was concerned about the conditions faced by Indian labourers in Singapore. Apart from this it is possible that members were concerned that a large body of Indian menial workers would affect the social standing of the wider Indian community in the eyes of other ethnic communities. Nationalists in India during this period were similarly concerned about the effects that the presence of Indian labourers overseas would have on the prestige of India as a nation. Nationalists in India during this period were similarly concerned about the effects that the presence of indentured Indian labourers overseas, particularly female labourers, would have on the prestige of India as a nation. Nationalists were particularly concerned with the sexual vulnerability of female indentured labourers. The Viceroy of India at the time, Charles Hardinge (1910-1916), believed that to Indian nationalists, indenture branded “their whole race…with the stigma of helotry.” Tejaswini Niranjana, “Left to the Imagination: Indian and Female Sexuality in Trinidad,” in Alternative Modernities, ed. Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 259- 60. 12 Emigration to Straits Settlements: Report for 1885, p. 1, IOR/L/PJ/6/178, File 903, BL. After the enactment of the steamship subsidy, fares for statute and free immigrants of the agricultural class were fixed at 8 rupees for the journey from Negapatam to Penang and 11 rupees for the journey between Negapatam and Singapore. H. A. Thompson, Straits Settlements Annual Report on Immigration for the Year 1887 (Singapore: Government Printing House, 1888), 2. 13 Sanjay Paswan and Pramanshi Jaideva, eds., Encyclopedia of in India (Satyawati Nagar: Kalpaz Publications, 2002), 51.

! 81! to desperation during bad seasons and served as a push factor for migration to the Straits Settlements during those periods, it also encouraged the practice of exploitative money lending.14 Prior to the 1950s and 1960s, the vast majority of untouchables in the rural areas of Tamil districts in India did not own land and worked as bonded and semi-bonded agricultural labourers for higher caste villagers.15 During famines and poor harvests, untouchables were of less use to higher caste villagers as agricultural serfs and it was harder to maintain them financially. It became more profitable to let them travel overseas for labour, and untouchables were often lent money at exploitative rates of interest, or in exchange for an inequitable amount of promised future labour from kinsmen. Substantial debt, poverty and a dependency on higher castes for everyday subsistence were common features of untouchable life.16 This made them more likely to take up emigration during the early post-convict phase, when travel to the Straits was unpopular amongst the wider community due to the scarcity of available information about living conditions there. The little information that was available about life in Malaya during this period tended to focus on the harsh conditions that were present before greater regulatory frameworks were imposed.

A report by the Protector of Immigrants in 1879, suggests that during that year many indentured recruits were not suited for agricultural work. Taken together with other reports from the late 19th century, the implication of this particular report is that many of the men that were being recruited for indentured labour were physically weak or prone to illness. According to the Protector,

Every gang of men we receive now-a-days contains a number of utterly useless characters, varying from only a small percentage to a fourth or even sometimes a third of the whole…How they lived in their own countries is a puzzle. Probably, as thiefs (sic), beggars, or scavengers.17

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 14 Ibid., 52. 15 Chockalingam, “From Outcaste to Caste,” 55-56. 16 Ibid., 56. 17 Straits Settlements Government Gazettes, August 1, 1879, 556, quoted in, Frank Heidemann, Kanganies in and Malaysia: Tamil Recuriter-cum-Foreman as a Sociological Category in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century (Munich: Anacon, 1992), 49.

! 82! The increasing number of low caste and untouchable Hindus who arrived in Singapore and the other Straits Settlements may have contributed to the solidification of caste boundaries, as Tamil Hindus in the colonies seem to have responded by reasserting elements of their hierarchical dominance. A labour commission report issued by the Straits Settlements government in 1890 suggests that the highest number of Indian plantation labourers were from low and untouchable castes.18 The report reveals that planters were again complaining about the inferior quality of many incoming labourers who were somewhat euphemistically described as being from a “non-agricultural class.” European planters in Malaya were asserting a range of racial schemas and taxonomies to ascertain which races were better suited to manual labour. Some argued that Chinese workers were healthier than South Indians, while others posited that darker-skinned workers “were stronger and more resistant to fever.”19 Amongst South Indians, there is evidence to suggest that the predominance of low caste workers was used to explain high incidences of death, disease and debilitation. The report noted that in terms of physical health, “the Vellalas and high caste coolies” were “generally the best men” and complained about the overall quality of workers, most of whom were from “unsuitable castes.” 20

The planters consulted for the Labour Commission Report specifically indicated their desire to recruit higher caste Vellalas, indicating the predominance of the belief that higher caste workers were healthier and physically more robust. The poor physical health, high death rates and debilitation of Indian plantation workers were attributed to their caste, with low caste immigrants portrayed as being weak and sickly. This pronouncement failed to recognize that labour practices at the time seriously undermined or compounded the health problems of Indian labourers. Workers who missed the requisite number of workdays stipulated in their contracts due to illness were deprived of rice rations, exacerbating their condition and lessening the chance of recovery.21 A report for 1887 indicated how dire the situation became for labourers,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 18 Labour Commission Report 1890, p.6, incomplete record, additional details missing, National Library, Singapore. 19 Ibid., 6. 20 Ibid., 4, 6; emphasis added. 21 Ibid., 6. Many reports during this period also complain about how Indian labourers underfed themselves in order to save money for remittance. A rice diet with little else seems to have been the norm, which would suggest not only widespread iron deficiency but also a susceptibility to beriberi. V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 24, 2011.

! 83! with many labour contracts “cancelled by mutual consent with a view to saving the lives of the coolies.” 22 The Straits Settlements Indian Immigration Agent, H. Thompson noted that such “men should have never been recruited, being of castes unaccustomed to field work.”23 While most reports were seldom so direct as to mention that low castes were unsuitable for agricultural work this was often implied, reflecting a poor understanding of the distinction between the ritual occupational specification of castes like the Pariah and the actual agricultural activities that most landless peasants were left to perform under the Ryotwari system.24 For example, in the Labour Commission Report of 1890, soon after mentioning the complaints of planters about the inappropriate castes of indentured labourers, it was noted most of the Tamil coolies who arrived in hospital in “broken down form” were from the Pariah caste.25

With a lack of further documentary evidence and statistics by caste, it is unclear if there was indeed a link between low caste status and higher mortality rates and incidences of disease. These high rates could partially have been the result of factors that affected immigrant labourers in general, many of whom were from lower caste groups. Poor screening procedures at depots in India, coupled with the daily conditions faced by labourers most certainly exacerbated the situation.26 In this way, attributing high rates of disease, death and debilitation solely to the predominant caste composition of immigrants and the traditional roles of those castes can be interpreted as a sign of unwillingness on the part of government officials and planters to acknowledge the inadequacy of health, housing and dietary provisions for these labourers and also signal a general lack of substantive engagement with these issues.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 22 Thompson, Straits Settlements Annual Report 1887, 3. 23 Labour Commission Report 1890, 6. 24 A census report conducted in Madras at a later period demonstrates that more than half the Paraiyans in 1921 from that region were employed in agricultural labour although traditionally unlike the Pallars, their caste was not associated with agricultural work. I propose that the proportions of Paraiyars and other untouchable castes employed in agricultural work during the latter part of the 19th century would have been similarly high, corresponding to the increase in transitory landless labourers brought about by the shift from the Jajmani to the Ryotwari systems. Census of India: Madras, 1921, vol. 13 (Madras: Government Press, 1922), 216-7, quoted in A. Nagaraja Naidu, “Famines and Demographic Crisis - Some Aspects of the De-Population of Lower Castes in Madras Presidency, 1871-1921,” in Dalits and Tribes of India, ed. J. Cyril Kanmony (New Delhi: Mittal Publications, 2010), 48. 25 Labour Commission Report 1890, 6. 26 The Labour Commission Report notes the opinion of a doctor who remarked that the creation of the Negapattam Depot had failed to increase the physical quality of incoming migrant. Ibid., 4.

! 84! If there was a higher rate of death, disease and debilitation amongst untouchable migrants we can only speculate as to why this might have been the case. Grinding poverty was the norm for most rural untouchables in South India in the 19th century and the resulting poorer diets would have meant that untouchable migrants had weaker immune systems relative to other caste groups, corresponding to a higher susceptibility to illness.27 This would have been more acute during times of famine. The commission report noted that the physique of some immigrants improved upon arrival suggesting a nutritional, rather than a constitutional, deficiency. 28 One informant revealed that untouchables in his father’s village in the Mannargudi Thiruthiraputhi district of Tanjore were prevented from gaining independent access to sources of food.29 Even though untouchables in that village were predominantly occupied with agricultural work for the higher caste Kallars, they themselves were not allowed to own changkols (digging implements) or any other agricultural tools and were lent these items by higher caste villages to work on their fields.30 They were also prevented, with the threat of violence, from growing any plants or trees that could be harvested for food.31 Similarly, in many villages, the only animals that untouchables were allowed to keep were dogs. For meat-eating untouchable sub-castes, any additional nutrition from animal fat would have come from the infrequent supply of cows and buffalo corpses from higher caste villagers. While the specifics of these restrictions may have been limited to some villages, the pattern of restricting access to resources and food in order to maintain exploitative feudal relationships between higher caste and untouchables were more widespread. The same informant emphasised that the higher castes restricted the untouchables’ supply of water by controlling access to the village water tank, and that after the available water had been used for cooking and consumption, there was a limited supply available for bathing, washing and cleaning.32 This, he suggested, limited the hygiene practices of some

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 27 Ranjit Kumar Chandra, “Nutrition and the Immune System: An Introduction,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 66, no.2 (August 1997): 460S-63S. 28 Ibid. 29 V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 24, 2011. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. Edgar Thurston’s extensive section on the “Paraiyan” caste in his Castes and Tribes of Southern India notes that some Pariah groups paid higher caste land owners for the privilege of growing a small number of trees and harvesting the produce. The inability to engage in independent subsistence agriculture was compounded by legal issues and the difficulty these groups faced in getting wastelands registered in their name. Edgar Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India, rev.ed. (1909; repr., Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 2001), 137. 32 V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 24, 2011.

! 85! untouchable villagers and became somewhat culturally entrenched, shaping the daily habits that may have been carried over by some immigrants.33

Whatever the reality of the links between caste and physical health, planters’ complaints during this period contradict some scholarly accounts that argue that low caste Tamils were preferred for physical work owing to their perceived docility and compliance. Sandhu suggested that the low caste or untouchable South Indian was a vital component of an ideal workforce, owing to the fact that they were “easily manageable,” docile, and “simple.”34 Yet recruitment practices seem to have been more complex than this. Rather than being sought out as a matter of policy, it was the vulnerable socio-economic position of untouchables in South India that may have made them more likely to be induced or compelled to take up labour contracts in Malaya. Large fluctuations in Indian immigration for the years 1898, 1901, and 1900 were attributed to the vagaries of agricultural output and the relative success or failure of the harvest.35 Based on his analysis of statistical records, Nagaraja Naidu has argued that between 1871 and 1921, landless lower caste people were far more susceptible to death during famines and periods of scarcity, indicating a strong push factor. 36 This would indicate that lower caste individuals might have accounted for a substantial part of the increase in immigrant numbers during these periods.

The sources from planters that highlight high instances of death, illness and debilitation illustrate the difficult conditions that Indian labour migrants faced in Malaya once they arrived. Sandhu states that it was popularly believed in India around this time that Malaya was a “death trap yawning to engulf the surplus population of India.”37 This would further suggest that Malaya was not a popular destination for low-skilled labourers and that rumours of harsh, difficult conditions were widespread. This would support the notion that most Indian migrant labourers in

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 33 Ibid. 34 Sandhu, Indians in Malaya, 56-57. 35 Straits Settlements: Immigration Report 1901, June 16, 1902, p.1, IOR/L/PJ/6/603, File 1181, BL; Government of Madras, Emigration and Immigration in the Madras Presidency, for 1900, 1901, p.1, IOR/V/24/1195, BL; Government of Madras, Emigration and Immigration in the Madras Presidency, for 1898, 1899, p.1 IOR/V/24/1195, BL. 36 Naidu studies the famines that occurred in the Madras Presidency in the years 1876-78, 1891-92, 1896-97, 1900-01 and 1919-21. Naidu, “Famines and Demographic Crisis,” 35-51. 37 Kernial Singh Sandhu, “The Coming of the Indians to Malaysia,” in Sandhu and Mani, Indian Communities in Southeast Asia, 153.

! 86! Malaya were motivated to migrate out of economic necessity. Furthermore, most envisioned an eventual return home once they had saved enough money. J.E Nathan, author of the 1921 British Malayan Census, noted that “probably not one Indian labourer in 1000 comes to British Malaya with the idea of making this country his home; in two or three years he must answer the call of his village in India, though poverty may keep him here longer.”38 Nathan also noted that in contrast to the Chinese, who tended to settle in Singapore on a more long-term basis, Indians faced a relatively cheaper and quicker journey to India, where there were more stable political conditions.39 Although in the decades following the 1890s, conditions for Indian labourers in Singapore improved significantly, they nonetheless remained challenging and many saw their stay in Singapore as temporary, at least until the 1950s, when immigration laws were tightened and many began to choose permanent settlement in Singapore in the lead up to decolonisation. Many years later, in 1935, a labour correspondent writing for the Singapore-based English newspaper, The Indian, described the mental outlook of Indian labourers and compared it with the outlook of other Indian migrants of a higher socio-economic status:

An Indian labourer leaves his hearth and home and comes to Malaya not with a spirit of adventure nor with any desire to see and know things about new lands and new people. He is forced by circumstances to leave his motherland. He makes up his mind to leave with mental pangs and promises within himself and also makes loud promises to his kith and kin as to how he will endeavour to save money and return to the family bosom at no distant date. He actually tears himself away from his home with more real feeling of pain than we do…40

The strong psychological attachment to kin and homeland in India informed a transient outlook in most Indian immigrants which was reinforced by structural factors. A skewed gender ratio also made it difficult for male migrants to find wives and establish families in Singapore.41 In 1881, for instance, there were 8380 Tamil

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 38 Nathan, Census of British Malaya, 1921, 104. 39 Ibid., 98. When referring to the political conditions in China, Nathan may have been referring to the period of instability brought about by the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1911 or the series of foreign interventions and major rebellions that had occurred in China throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 40 “Indian Labour Topics by Our Labour Correspondent,” The Indian, January 4, 1936, 5. 41 E.M. Merewether, Report of the Census of the Straits Settlement 1891 (Singapore: Government Printing Office, 1892), 37.

! 87! men and 2095 Tamil women enumerated in the census.42 This ratio remained fairly constant throughout the early decades of the twentieth century. The census of 1921 also revealed that forty percent of Indian men and eighty five percent of Indian women in Malaya were married, demonstrating a very large majority of single men amongst Indian migrants who would have had to find brides in India.43 Social mobility and future prospects were also limited because many immigrants who came under labour contracts were prevented from practicing trades or from finding non- labouring occupations.

Finally, the maintenance of strong transnational kinship bonds not only heavily informed cultural behaviour, but also meant that questions of identity that arose in the Indian community were closely linked to political and social movements that arose in India. Before I turn to these issues in the later chapters, I will explore the discourses that arose around caste and Indian labour migration in order demonstrate how different migration and labour recruitment schemes came to influence caste identity.

Discourses on Indian Labour Migration, the Welfare of Indian Labourers and the Retention of the Caste System

Every aspect of Indian labour migration during the 19th and early 20th centuries was the subject of considerable public debate in which several prevalent and often contradictory discourses emerged, that variously buttressed or critiqued governmental immigration and labour policies. These discourses sought to explain the social and cultural impact of migration on the Indian immigrant, leading to a debate about the appropriate place for Indian immigrants in the social order of the colonies. Some early administrators wanted Indian labourers to settle in Malaya after their contracts, to tame the jungle frontier and develop it for agriculture. Limited schemes were attempted, including one in 1886 that issued land grants to 24 Indian families in Perak in the hope that they would develop the land as colonists and set up an Indian village

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 42 Dunlop et al., Census 1881, iv. 43 Nathan, Census of British Malaya 1921, 60.

! 88! community.44 For a number of reasons, including concerns about the displacement of the indigenous Malay community, proposals of this nature never enjoyed widespread support and were eventually abandoned. The Indian labourer began to be increasingly viewed as a transient feature of Malayan society.

What is interesting about these proposals to reconstruct the village community is that they were justified on the basis that such social structures would have helped to preserve caste identities, and therefore would have protected immigrants from the supposed moral degradation that resulted from the loss of caste. A. M. Macgregor, the Indian Immigration Agent in the Straits Settlements, maintained that caste was an indispensible tool for regulating Indian societies. He submitted a proposal in 1882 to induce coolies who had finished their contracts to settle on land in Malaya and form Indian communities that he felt would facilitate the reintroduction of caste amongst labourers.45 A year earlier, Macgregor had highlighted the lack of caste consciousness amongst Indian labourers in the Straits Settlement as a worrying trend and the possible cause of rising alcoholism:

…at present, caste can hardly be said to exist here, consequently the better classes appear to lose all self-respect and take to drink which, to my mind, is having a most disastrous effect on the Indian population of these Settlements.46

When Macgregor writes about the “better classes” his choice of words reflects a widespread belief amongst Europeans in the congruence between caste and ‘class’. This included, for the higher echelons, ambiguous notions of respectability centered around assumptions about financial status, hygiene, educational levels, social etiquette and a disinclination for crime and alcohol abuse. These also reflect a consciousness of caste differences in the Straits Settlements during this period amongst non-Indians, particularly Europeans. By virtue of its overlap with socio- economic indicators, caste was believed to be a reliable indicator of a Hindu’s social !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 44 A. M. Macgregor, Annual Report on Indian Immigration for the year 1890 (Penang: Indian Immigration Department, 1891), p. 3, IOR/L/PJ/6/303, File 1287, BL. A certain official, Mr. Denison, launched the plan in 1886, which was to see the settlement of an initial 100 families; only 24 families were settled before the government stopped the plan. Denison’s initial plan extended to attracting 500 families with free passage, tools and three acres of land per family. Labour Commission Report 1890, 3. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid.

! 89! standing. Caste was also seen as a culturally legitimate expression of Indian identity, and in the 1880s, as indicated by Macgregor’s blithe reference, its social utility. Vocal opposition to caste-based prejudice had not yet begun to acquire a dominant share of public opinion amongst Europeans and English-educated Asians in Singapore.47 Many critics like Macgregor felt that the erosion of caste identities brought on by Indian labour migration would have an injurious effect to the social fabric of overseas Indian society.

To many Europeans during that period, caste was considered a necessary evil, something that was not intrinsically good, but which was essential to maintain the social order of Indian society and to ensure the maintenance of certain ‘moral’ standards amongst Hindus. This view was informed by the writings of early ethnographers and missionary scholars like the French Jesuit priest Abbé Jean Antoine Dubois, whose work was influential amongst officials in the in the early 19th century, at the time when the Company was in need of information about Indian customs and culture.48 Dubois criticised other European observers who saw caste as oppressive and argued that it was a great institution that had enabled India to maintain its civilisation through the millennia. He warned that without caste, Indians would inevitably “descend” to the level of untouchables who he described as having abandoned themselves to their natural propensities.49 “A nation of Pariahs, left to themselves,” he argued, “would speedily become worse than the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 47 This was mirrored by news coverage of caste in English-language papers in Singapore in the late 19th century. Such reports either took an ambivalent perspective on the ethical implications of the caste system or criticised the lack of official recognition of caste differences amongst Indians in parts of the Empire. An article in the Straits Times published in 1903 complained about the restriction of Asiatics into Australia, saying that measures were so tight that Hindus in were unable to obtain cooks of their own caste. “Restriction of Asiatic Immigration,” Straits Times, May 29, 1903, 4. This began to change in the early 20th century as more news articles began voicing critical views of the caste system and began highlighting the plight of untouchables in India as well as the efforts of the British authorities, Indian nationalists and reformers to alleviate their situation. For example, refer to “India’s Untouchables,” Straits Times, April 5, 1913, 8. In it, the author discusses the treatment of untouchables arguing for intervention, arguing that “there is a grotesque, hideous, revolting absurdity about the whole matter, but the pitiful aspects make it impossible to pass them over with scorn.” 48 The preface to the second edition of Dubois’ major work contains a letter of advertisement to the first edition from 1816, in which Major Wilks praises the value of the book to the Madras Government and recommends it as worthy of perusal. Jean Antoine Dubois, A Description of the Character, Manners, and Customs of the People of India; And of their Institutions, Religious and Civil, 2nd ed, ed. G. U. Pope (Madras: Law Bookseller and Publisher, 1862), v-ix. 49 Ibid., 13-14.

! 90! hordes of cannibals that wander the desarts (sic) of Africa, and would soon fall to the devouring of each other.”50

This reading of caste for its supposed practical societal benefits was especially strong amongst critics of Evangelicalism who were wary of its growing influence on Indian policy in the early 19th century. 51 Critics not only questioned the efforts of missionaries to proselytize the Christian faith amongst Indians, but also challenged what they saw as a misguided attempt to dismantle caste in order to socially emancipate India’s lower castes. An officer in the Madras Army, for example, expressed these concerns in a letter to the Asiatic Journal in 1821. Even though he stated that the justifications for caste-based behavioural protocols were “outwardly ridiculous or superstitious,” he argued that the attempt by missionaries to undermine caste prejudices would result in Indians adopting the alcoholism and immorality that he associated with the European lower classes.52

Even Evangelicals who were critical of the constraints placed on missionaries operating throughout the empire argued that caste was threatened by indenture and criticised the supposed double standards of those who warned about the potential social unrest that would accompany missionary efforts but remained silent when it came to the challenges placed on Hindu labourers by the system of indenture. A contributor to the Calcutta Christian Observer in 1838 criticised the system of indentured labour and questioned whether Indian coolies had the facilities to maintain caste under indentured contracts in Mauritius.53

From the other side of the spectrum came the argument that in addition to better wages and living conditions, immigration was beneficial for low caste and

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 50 Ibid.,15. 51 Missionaries and other observers debated about the nature of caste and whether it was an element of social custom or religion. After the Mutiny of 1857, it was increasingly seen as an element of religion and there was even less of an official inclination to intervene in caste-related issues. 52 Carnaticus [pseud.], Four letters of Carnaticus, explanatory of his view of the Indian army, the missionaries, and press of India, as Inserted in the Asiatic Journals for May, September, October, and November, 1821 (London: n.p., 1821), 17,10,19, accessed October 20, 2011, http://www.jstor.org/stable/60209803 53 The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China and Australasia 26 (May-August 1838) (London: Wm. H. Allen and Co.), 142-3.

! 91! untouchable migrants, precisely because caste was eroded.54 Immigration, it was argued, granted these migrants the ability to lead lives of far greater dignity under much better social conditions. A French writer, J. Morris, noted that Indian coolies who settled down in Mauritius after their contracts were “no longer Parias” but became “men”.55 An English Baptist missionary in Trinidad in 1866 also commented on how the coolies there had been delivered “from the intolerable yoke of caste.”56 Another British observer in India, Oliver Warner, observed a change in the comportment of returning Indian labourers, remarking that coolies leaving India would touch his feet, while those who returned would shake his hand.57

The idea that being sent overseas emancipated low caste Hindus from the oppression of caste customs in India was possibly also the reason why Sir Harry Ord, the Governor of the Straits Settlements (1867-1873), had earlier come up with a proposal to recruit a regiment of some nine hundred low caste South Indian privates and to station them in the Straits. Ord aimed “to offer such advantages as would induce the sepoy to look upon the Straits as his adopted country, and having his wife and family with him to settle down in it for life.”58 The specific reference to low caste privates reflected the belief that the comparative decline in caste prejudices in the Straits provided better living conditions for lower caste Hindus. This viewpoint gained increasing popularity by the 1930s and was being promoted by prominent figures such as C. F. Andrews, a missionary and close associate of Gandhi, who apart from campaigning vigorously for Indian independence was also concerned with social reform and the plight of Indian labourers overseas.59 Andrews, whose views were shaped by his involvement in the Christian Social Union, unambiguously viewed the entire caste system as a social injustice and compared it to white racism in Africa

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 54 This argument about the decline of caste fits neatly into the wider discourse about the general improvement in the conditions of Indian labourers that was being promoted by Straits Settlement officials in order to ensure a dependable supply of labour. Andrew Clarke, the Governor of the Straits Settlements between 1873 and 1875 stated, for example, that Tamil labourers were “happier and richer” in the Straits. A Bill to Repeal the Straits Settlements Emigration Act, 1877, and to Amend the Indian Emigration Act, 1883, 1884, p. 249, IOR 1/PJ/6/137, File 2143, BL. 55 Carter and Torabully, Coolitude, 58. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. 58 “Ord to Granville, 13 May 1869,” CO 273/29 112, National Archives, UK, quoted in Lee, The British as Rulers, 159. 59 “Caste in Malaya,” Straits Times, January 26, 1934, 10.

! 92! during the period.60 M. Y. Yeats, the superintendent of the 1931 Madras Presidency Census, was also critical of caste and was of the view that “Emigration…[was]… a great teacher of self respect, for caste…[was]… to a large extent put away when the immigrant cross[ed] the sea.” Yeats went on to argue that the self-reliance brought on by emigration was a leading factor in the rising levels of social consciousness amongst untouchable groups during that period. His argument is particularly interesting because it suggests that immigration overseas was having an impact on attitudes in India, thus highlighting that Indian labour migration effected cultural practices on both sides of the Indian Ocean through transnational networks. The Indian immigrant travelling back and forth along established migratory routes had an impact on the cultural landscapes on both side of the Indian Ocean and became became an agent of dynamic cultural exchange. According to Yeats:

A man who, little removed from praedial serfdom in Tanjore, finds himself treated on his own merits like everyone else when he crosses the sea, paid in cash for his labours and left to his own resources, must in the majority of cases benefit from the change, and it is probably the existence of the emigration current that has contributed most to the growth of self-consciousness among the depressed classes in India; and in the interests of those classes one might well say “not less emigration but more,” for the true remedy of the condition in which they find themselves is not to be looked for in government enactments or pious utterances or pious utterances but in a growth of self-reliance among the communities themselves.61

In some cases the very act of travelling overseas was enough to grant returning untouchables more respect in the eyes of high caste members of their villages in South India. One interviewee recalls that his father, a former untouchable, who first travelled to Singapore to work in the 1920s, was subsequently treated with more respect when he returned. Not only had his father’s changed his dress, wearing more “modern” pants and shirts (themselves symbols of increased status), his years in Singapore were seen as evidence that he had acquired more experience of the wider

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 60 Gandhi disagreed with Andrews and saw caste as a useful institution that merely needed reforming in order to rid itself of practices such as untouchability. Timothy Gorringe, “Slouching Towards Jerusalem: Achieving Human Equality,” in Public Theology for the 21st Century, eds. William Storrar and Andrew Morton (Cornwall: T&T Clark Ltd, 2004), 318. 61 “Caste in Malaya,” Straits Times, 10.

! 93! world than many others within the village. Although his caste status was not simply forgotten, his increased worldliness was recognised by higher caste villages who adopted a more respectful tone of voice when speaking with him, as opposed to other untouchables who had never left the village.62

However the idea that migration was a positive experience for low caste Tamils was also often invoked to deflect any criticism about their living conditions in Malaya. Alban Smith, who had managed Tamil labour for 30 years, wrote to the Straits Times in 1936, lambasting criticisms directed at the conditions faced by untouchable sweepers and rubbish collectors in India and the high incidences of disease amongst them.63 He contrasted the “filthy palmyra leaf hovels” of the low castes in India with the “splendid” government labour lines in which they were housed in Malaya, asserting that they were “pampered” with higher wages than they could hope to receive in India.64

These debates about the negative or positive ramifications of the loss of caste reach one note of consensus: that caste did indeed seem to weaken in overseas colonies once migrants had crossed the Indian Ocean. Noticeably absent from these records are the voices of Indian labour migrants themselves, which might reveal other aspects of changes in caste practices, especially the extent to which caste was weakened. The interests involved in Indian labour migration were many and varied and the actual welfare of Indian migrants was often a secondary concern. This might have encouraged exaggerations about the improved cultural conditions that untouchables encountered amongst Hindu communities in Singapore and other parts of Malaya. Newspaper reports and travellers’ accounts in the 19th century make sufficient reference to caste status to indicate that it did not simply disappear in Singapore. Since most low caste and untouchable immigrants were employed as either plantation labourers or government municipal workers, understanding the interactions between the employment and labour recruitment policies under which they arrived and worked and the ways in which Indian labour immigrants negotiated culture illuminates some of the dynamics of caste continuity. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 62 V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 24, 2011. 63 “Municipal Strike: Coolies “Pampered” and Splendidly Housed,” Straits Times, December 10, 1936, 10. 64 Ibid.

! 94! The Dialogical Shaping of Labour Recruitment, Polices and Culture

Colonial writers who commented on the decline of caste identification amongst Indian labourers sent overseas tended to focus on the Indian labourer as a passive and malleable subject, vulnerable and open to the transforming impact of an imperial agency that brought about substantial changes to his or her environment and circumstances of employment. Similarly, scholarly work has also tended to focus on the impact of colonial labour policies on the Indian labourer as a passive subject and his or her body as a test site for the experiments in labour management that accompanied the transnational movement of Indian labourers throughout the British Empire. Kernial Singh Sandhu has argued that the excessive “supervision, patronage and paternalism” that was displayed by the Indian and Malayan governments was detrimental to the development of agency in Indian labourers.65 Sandhu contends that this paternalism created (or in the case of low caste workers, maintained) docility and a relative lack of ambition. This became manifest in low social mobility and a lack of collectivized action for better conditions, compared with Chinese labourers in Singapore who agitated and organised themselves at a much earlier period.66

While policies and labour doctrines certainly had an impact on the outlook and social orientation of the average labourer, it is important to seek out the dialogical processes that might otherwise be hidden by asymmetrical power relations. The over-reliance on the idea of the “docile Indian worker” uncritically retains colonial essentialisms without adequately exploring how the evolution of Indian labour recruitment policies and employment polices was shaped by negotiations between the British authorities and Indian labourers.67

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 65 Sandhu, “Coming of the Indians,” 164. 66 An Indian Government Report from 1950 also stated that the Chinese received higher wages due to better organisation. S. Nanjundan, Office of the Economic Advisor: Indians in Malayan Economy (Delhi: Manager of Publications, 1950), 28. Unskilled foreign workers employed in the construction industry in Singapore today continue to have their wages informally tiered according to their nationalities, with Indian nationals generally receiving lower salaries than their Chinese counterparts. 67 References to the docility of the Tamil coolie are common in official government reports from Singapore and the other Straits Settlements. The Labour Commission report of 1890 for example, argued about the desirability of Tamil labour on the ground that the Tamil was “a British subject, accustomed to British rule”, and was “well-behaved and docile.” Quoted in Lee, The British as Rulers, 158. Other authors have also argued recently that South Indians were recruited because “they were more docile and reliable.” “Introduction,” in Transnational Migration: The Indian Diaspora, eds. William Safran, Ajaya K. Sahoo and Brij V. Lal (New York: Routledge, 2009), xix.

! 95! Labour policies often shaped many aspects of a plantation or municipal workers’ daily life, including their accommodation, food, religious arrangements as well as their relationships with their co-workers from other castes. An understanding of how cultural identities were retained or challenged is therefore very closely linked to the dialogical shaping of labour policies. For example, the decision made by British Municipal authorities in Singapore to allow segregation between touchable and untouchable Hindu workers in vocation and housing was a result of pressure from higher caste labourers.68 Workers therefore did not simply orient themselves within the boundaries set out by European planters and the British Government in the Straits, but in many cases actively influenced the shaping of these boundaries. Similarly the evolution and re-orientation of British policy was shaped by a conscious awareness of the kinds of migration schemes that were popular amongst Indian labourers. The unpopularity of indenture and its effects on Indian labour productivity for example, was one of the reasons that it was eventually banned in 1910, to be completely replaced by the assisted migration schemes that coloured and shaped the experiences of a vast majority of Indian labourers in Singapore and other parts of Malaya.69

Different Systems of Labour Recruitment and Management and their Effect on the Continuity of Cultural Practices Overseas

From the 1870s to the late 1930s, labourers arrived in Singapore under different kinds of contractual obligations, with varying levels of economic independence and debt. Labourers were either “free” or indentured, and were recruited by kanganies and government agents, or arrived independently. They were either the recipients of government funding, loans and subsidies or paid for their journey to Malaya on their own, often through loans from Chettiar moneylenders, members of their local community, immigration agents and their kanganies or foremen.70 As a result of these differences, caste and other cultural identity markers were negotiated differently by different sections of the Indian immigrant working class, who were constructing new !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 68 This will be discussed in greater detail in the next chapter. 69 Swee Hock Saw, Trends and Differentials in International Migration in Malaya (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya, 1963), 100. 70 S. Bayly, Bill to Repeal, the Straits Settlements Emigration Act, 1877, and to Amend the Indian Emigration Act, 1883, 1884, p. 249, IOR 1/PJ/6/137, File 2143, BL.

! 96! social orders under financial and cultural conditions and relationships that evolved as adaptive responses to policy. Indenture never emerged as a significant system of labour recruitment in the Straits Settlements and the Federated Malay States. Instead, other forms of recruitment like the Kangany System became more popular amongst emigrants.71 Under these systems, kanganies and other foremen often not only acted as intermediaries between European planters, municipal officials, and Indian labourers, but also became creditors to these labourers lending their followers money for travelling and settling down in their new locations.72 Kanganies were also often from the same villages where their subordinates were drawn, which together with their money-lending activities, gave them considerable social capital. According to Frank Heidemann, the figure of the kangany provided a visible central authority that was lacking under the indentured system and also provided a continuum between the village and the plantation.73 Describing the condition of labourers on Ceylonese plantations who were enlisted through a similar method of Kangany recruitment, Kumari Jayawardena argues that after escaping serfdom in South India “they became new serfs in Ceylon, bound to the planter and Kangany by indebtedness and other ties” as kanganies sought to translate their influence into efforts to preserve the status quo.74 In Singapore and other parts of Malaya, the relationships between labourers and their kanganies were not always characterised by a similar desire to restrict challenges to the status quo. However these relationships nonetheless often had an important bearing on the negotiation of caste and caste differences, because of the mutually reinforcing cultural and economic dependencies between labourers and their foremen.

Several scholars have described in detail the different nuances that existed within mechanisms like the Kangany System that were used to manage and recruit Indian labour. Saw Swee Hock’s report on migration trends in Malaya provides a concise summary of the history of the various forms of labour recruitment and management

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 71 Fred Clothey estimates that by 1938 when ‘assisted’ migration had ceased, a total of 181,132 indentured labourers had been recruited to Malaya and another 1,186,717 labourers had been recruited by kanganies. He suggests that the vast majority of these were Tamils. Clothey, Ritualizing, 6. 72 Chandra Jayawardena, “Migration and Social Change: A Survey of Indian Communities Overseas,” Geographical Review 58, no. 3 (1968): 433. 73 Heidemann, Kanganies, 48. 74 Visakha Kumari Jayawardena, Rise of the Labor Movement in Ceylon (Durham: Duke University Press, 1972), 357.

! 97! that were utilised in Malaya.75 His report also contains detailed statistical breakdowns of the proportions of Indian immigrants who arrived in Malaya under various schemes between 1880 and 1962. Many different kinds of recruitment systems ran concurrently, overlapping across different periods over time (see Appendix).

Indenture was the first organised system of managing Indian labour migration to Malaya. The system began in 1834 in response to the labour shortages brought about by the end of slavery, and it has been the primary focus of scholarship dealing with Indian labour migration to overseas colonies in the Caribbean, Pacific, and East Africa. Sandhu estimates that roughly 250,000 indentured labourers entered the Straits Settlements between 1844 and 1910.76 Most of these individuals were recruited from Tamil districts in the south such as Salem, Combaconum, Tanjore, Cuddalore, Trichinopoly, Chittoor, Madura, Chingleput and Madras, and entered into contracts that lasted between one and three years, a significantly shorter duration than the five year contracts that were common in other parts of the world.77 However compared with most other British colonies, indenture was less significant in Malaya, where most labourers chose to arrive independently or through kanganies as free labourers under assisted and non-assisted schemes.78 According to Saw Swee Hock, at no time did indentured immigrants form a substantial proportion of the total Indians entering Malaya, which generally remained under 15 percent.79 Indenture was also never significant in Singapore, where plantations became less commercially significant as the century progressed.80 In 1890, the Assistant Indian Immigration Agent, J.O Anthonisz reported that there were no indentured labourers in Singapore and that there were possibly only two batches that had ever arrived there.81 Attempts by the authorities in Singapore to introduce statute immigration or contracted terms of employment similar to indenture had proven to be an abject failure. In 1887, 15 out of

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 75 Saw, Trends and Differentials, 99-108. 76 “Indian Indentured Labourers,” Overseas Records Information 21, National Archives, UK, accessed July 17, 2012, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/research-guides/indian-indentured- labour.htm 77 Ibid. 78 A similar system of Kangany recruitment was popular in Ceylon and Burma. Indentured labourers were the most proportionately significant in the sugar plantations of Penang. The coffee and rubber plantations that came later primarily used other systems. Ibid. 79 Saw, Trends and Differentials, 100. 80 The Kangany system began gaining popularity from the 1890s onward. Plantations in Singapore were predominantly used to grow gambier and pepper. 81 Labour Commission Report 1891, Evidence 194, quoted in Lee, The British as Rulers, 156.

! 98! 24 statute migrants who entered into contracts absconded north to Johore where they were free from the threat of arrest.82

The system of indenture was associated with widespread abuses in its recruitment mechanisms. The Sub-Collector of Tanjore, who was stationed at the port of Negapatnam in 1870, denounced indenture as “a regularly organised system of kidnapping.”83 Besides the abuses associated with the illegal use of compunction and misrepresentation to get immigrants bound to overseas contracts, the effect of entering lengthy work contracts also had a significantly negative impact on indentured labourers who frequently succumbed to psychological illnesses and depression. Reports of suicides and desertion in various colonies contradict depictions of Indian labourers as docile workers suited to repetitive manual labour under long terms of contractual obligation.84 H. A. Thompson, the Indian Immigration Agent for the Straits Settlements in 1887, commented on the attitudes of indentured labourers towards their contracts.

On all estates, the majority of the coolies work unwillingly and are always ready, for the slightest excuse, to refuse to turn out in the field…all coolies under a three years’ agreement look forward to the day when they will be granted their discharge tickets, and I do not believe there is a single statute immigrant under a first contract who would not gladly consent to have his contract cancelled.85

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 82 Johore was outside the jurisdiction of the Straits Settlement authorities. Emigration to Straits Settlements; Annual Report on Indian Immigration for 1887, n.d., IOR/L/PJ/6/226, File 752, BL. 83 Netto, Indians in Malaya, 22. The Labour Commission Report of 1891 also noted that many indentured labourers who had come to Malaya were deceived and told that they would be allowed to practice their own trades upon arrival. Lee, The British as Rulers, 156. Criticisms against indenture led the Indian government to create a new official post, The Protector of Migrants. Amrith, “Indians Overseas,” 235. Arasaratnam has described the system of indentured labour and the criticisms leveled against it in some detail. Arasaratnam, Indians in Malaysia, 11-14. 84 When queried about a spate of suicides amongst indentured labourers in Fiji in 1902, the Governor of Fiji remarked that the life of an indentured Indian Coolie was “unattractive and monotonous.” He went on to comment that the Indian coolie was “peculiarly prone to suicide” for what appeared to be “the most inadequate reason.” This highlights the fact that some colonial authorities poorly understood the psychological toll of indenture and isolation on the Indian labourer. “Suicide among Indian Coolies in Fiji,” letter from the Governor of Fiji to Alfred Lyttleton, M.P., Secretary of State for the Colonies, November 15, 1904, IOR 1/PJ/6/706, File 130, BL. Desertions also occurred as labourers deserted their jobs for better wages and working conditions elsewhere. Owing to more liberal labour laws and an increased demand for labour, desertions to Singapore from other parts of Malaya increased substantially in the 1880s. Emigration to the Straits Settlements: Report for 1885, n.d., p.2, IOR/L/PJ/6/178, File 903, BL. 85 Thompson, Straits Settlements Annual Report 1887, 3.

! 99! It is clear that many of the assumptions that the authorities initially held about the attractiveness of indentured labour to Indian workers were being eroded by the problems encountered in Malaya. Bonded labour appears to have been particularly unpopular amongst Indians compared to other forms of labour that afforded workers more freedom of movement and choice. Apart from reports of depression and suicide, desertions were rife despite the threat of prison sentences for contract-breakers. “Free labour” became far more popular in the Straits Settlements and other parts of Malaya towards the end of the 19th century. Free labourers were also largely imported at the expense of individual employers but were employed on a monthly basis. This increased the labour supply, as more potential emigrants were willing to undertake these agreements.

Scholarly studies that have examined the decline of caste in societies such as Fiji, where indenture was the predominant system of Indian labour recruitment, have noted that the end of occupational specification based on caste, while not directly a challenge on caste identity itself, was one of the reasons for the decline in the use of the caste system as a tool for organising differences in status.86 The uniform work within the plantation therefore became a social leveler. In his research conducted amongst Indian communities in Fiji, Adrian Mayer notes only one unsuccessful attempt by a high caste leader to reintroduce the segregation of untouchables.87 None of his Fiji Indian informants could recall any attempt to reinstate caste-based restrictions on food and drink. 88 In Malayan plantations, although occupational specification was not usually organised by caste, caste difference and a notion of hierarchy seems to have persisted for decades, despite challenges by lower caste Hindus. There are many reasons for the differences in caste continuities in Malaya and other overseas colonies like Fiji, one important factor being that labourers in colonies that were situated further away tended to have far less contact with India. Widespread illiteracy made contact with kin in India via letter writing difficult and few generally returned from Fiji even after the advent of steam ships.89 Another

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 86 Mayer, Peasants in the Pacific, 157; Barton M. Schwartz, Caste in Overseas Indian Communities (San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company, 1967), 3. 87 Ibid., 157. 88 Ibid. 89 Carmen Voigt-Graf, “ and the Indo-Fijian Diaspora: The Relationship of Indo- Fijians to India and its People,” in Transnational Migrations: The Indian Diaspora, eds. William Safran, Ajaya K. Sahoo & Brij V. Lal (New York: Routledge, 2009), 96, 98, 100.

! 100! possible reason for the decreased significance of caste in Fiji was that the labouring population was generally very diverse, with Hindi, Tamil and Telugu speaking labourers from various parts of India working together.90

In contrast, the vast majority of Indian labourers in Malaya were Tamils, and even with regional variations in caste and jati hierarchies, overlaps and commonalities from a smaller zone of reference with a common language made it easier to determine someone’s relative position within a caste hierarchy based on their caste names.91 This would have had more of an impact on the caste attitudes of workers who were recruited under non-indentured schemes of employment. Frank Heidemann argues that members of heterogeneously composed indentured gangs not only hailed from different regions of the Madras Presidency, but they were also usually isolated individuals.92 Under non-indentured systems of labour recruitment that involved the use of kanganies and foremen as recruiters, work gangs tended to originate from the same geographical areas.

Greater social familiarity within working groups would have created more suitable conditions for the retention of caste hierarchies. This would have been extended by the social influence of kanganies, mandores and other Indian foremen. From the 1860s planters in Malaya began bypassing recruitment agents, instead entrusting senior labourers on their plantations and estates with the task of finding new workers from India. These individuals or kanganies would be sent to India with a sum of money provided by their planter employers. There the kangany would travel to his own village or region of origin to recruit labourers, each of whom would earn him a commission back in Malaya.93 Kanganies would pay for the living expenses of the recruits while on transit as well as their travel arrangements. They would often also purchase new clothes for them as well as host a farewell celebration held in their village on the night before their departure to immigration depots on the coast.94 Since !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 90 Ibid., 101. 91 An easy distinction would have been made between touchable and untouchable Hindus since the latter group belonged to a relatively small number of jati groupings that were widely distributed throughout the Madras Presidency. 92 Heidemann, Kanganies, 48. 93 Ravindra Jain noted that kanganies usually recruited from their kin groups that were sometimes spread as far as the spatial boundaries of their sub-caste. Jain, South Indians, 245. 94 By the late 1920s and 1930s, labourers returning to India had revealed that conditions and salaries in Malaya were not as rosy as depicted by Kanganies who were increasingly being seen in a negative

! 101! recruits and kanganies were usually from the same villages, planters and the authorities initially believed that this recruitment would remove some of the abuses associated with indenture by introducing a dimension of mutual accountability. They believed that kanganies would be answerable for the well being of their charges, and labourers were also thought to be less likely to run off seeking other employers once in Malaya. However in practice, labourers were often in considerable debt to their kanganies and this led to widespread abuse.95

Knowledge about the abuses associated with the kangany system were fairly well- known amongst administrators in the colonies by the early 19th century, but unlike indenture, the kangany system never received the same amount of negative political attention in India. This was partly because one of the main criticisms against indenture - that indentured labourers who violated contracts where liable for imprisonment - did not feature in the kangany system. In a confidential dispatch to the Colonial Office, the Governor of Mauritius, John Chancellor (1911-1916), who had previously criticised the kangany system for the abuses arising from debt to kanganies, later suggested implementing the system in Mauritius, but ensuring that employers paid advances directly to labourers rather than doing so through kanganies.96

How the financial influence of a kangany translated to cultural authority with regards to the negotiation of caste appears to have varied significantly between different contexts and individuals. In his study of kanganies in Sri Lanka and Malaysia, Frank Heidemann argues that the kangany was more than a middleman; rather, he was the “architect of the Tamil plantation society.” According to him, kanganies were dynamic agents of social change who brought about challenges to caste through the even distribution of work and wages. Heidemann’s main argument regarding caste under the kangany system in Malaya was that although caste was retained, its

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! light. Ravindra Jain noted that Kanganies usually recruited from their kin groups, which were sometimes spread as far as the spatial boundaries of their sub-caste. Ibid., 248-9. 95 Like the commercial recruiters who preceded kanganies, kanganies would sometimes also appropriate money that was provided by the government or planters as cash advances for emigrant labourers. Labour Commission Report 1890, 4,16. 96 Confidential Despatch from J. R. Chancellor (Mauritius) to Colonial Office, November 8, 1915, CO571/3, National Archives, UK.

! 102! meaning changed significantly.97 The basic values of the caste system, he argues, were used by kanganies instrumentally to control their subordinates and to advance their interests. At times, kanganies would undermine the caste system by sanctioning inter-caste marriages that would have previously been disallowed under stricter rules in India.98 At other times, kanganies would punish individuals involved in illegitimate inter-caste alliances.99 According to Heidemann, the absence of significant numbers of Brahmins on plantations also undermined the substance of the caste system, because the figure of the Brahmin was replaced by the head kangany as a symbol of authority and as the final arbiter in establishing a consensus on how caste and caste rankings were to be interpreted. Unlike the Brahmin however, the kangany derived his authority from profane rather than sacred legitimation; that is, his economic role within the plantation.

Heidemann’s main contention regarding caste therefore, is that although it was transplanted in Malayan plantations, it was fundamentally weakened, altered by a hollowing out of caste by kangany authority, as well as the inadequacy of socio- economic tools for the perpetuation of caste-based differentiation within the plantation. This is a problematic assumption because it assumes that the conceptual distinction that was made between the sacred and profane was salient in the minds of Hindu labourers, and was of enough importance to undermine or challenge the original significance of caste once rigid boundaries had been crossed. This does not adequately acknowledge the flexibility and dynamism of caste as a contested site of power relations.

What Heidemann’s account does suggest is that even if the underlying nature of caste in Malaya began to differ from India, with religious notions gradually being replaced by more secular communal concerns, the retention of caste identity was indeed continued and strengthened to a certain degree by the kangany system. Even if the distinctions between higher caste groups became less apparent, the divide between untouchable and caste-Hindus remained relatively strong and this can be partially attributed to role played by kanganies and other foremen.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 97 Heidemann, Kanganies, 7. 98 Ibid., 80. 99 Ibid.

! 103!

Ravindra Jain’s anthropological study of a Malayan plantation offers another study of kanganies, highlighting their role as guardians of traditional values within Malayan plantation society. In one of the more disturbing accounts in his study, one of his informants alleged that a kangany who had been issued a gun by the estate manager for the purpose of maintaining order, had shot dead an unmarried boy and a girl who were discovered in a relationship, and had hung their bodies on a rubber tree.100 Jain wrote that it was difficult to check the accuracy of the story but noted that it was consistent with other stories about kangany atrocities and brutality. The common themes this recollection shares with the other accounts of atrocities and harsh penalties imposed by kanganies suggest a collectively shaped memory amongst rubber tappers and estate workers of attempts by kanganies to maintain cultural norms through the use of physical force and compunction.

Jain argues that during the first two decades of the 20th century, the head kangany of an estate was said to have wielded the authority to kill individuals without fear of legal proceedings being brought against him.101 From the 1930s, the Malayan Labour Code regulated the administration of justice in labour lines that restricted the high- handedness of some kanganies, but did not eliminate excesses altogether. Kanganies still wielded the authority to inflict corporal punishment. Kanganies themselves were sub-divided into gangs under a head kangany, and often these labour gangs were divided by caste. Adi Dravidas or Tamil untouchables were usually supervised by untouchable kanganies. The presence of this visible differentiation would have helped to preserve caste barriers between different groups, facilitating endogamous marriage and other forms of separation. The presence of Adi Dravida Kanganies however, suggests that Adi Dravidas were amongst the first migrants to arrive, some progressing to a level of authority after years of service and also demonstrates the cultural destabilisation that accompanied migration.

European planters did not actively encourage caste prejudices and did not entertain caste differences when it came to wages, food rations, terms of employment, occupational specification or differences in the standards of living quarters. However !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 100 Jain, South Indians, 271. 101 Ibid., 280.

! 104! few had incentive to interfere with their workers’ attempts to establish caste rules within the boundaries of community life on their plantations. Avenues for caste distinctions were tolerated, but lower caste agitation was discouraged.102 By the early 20th century, planters in Malaya were actually being advised that the lack of caste distinctions on plantations discouraged higher caste coolies from remaining on plantations and planters were encouraged to take a more accommodating approach to caste. In 1919, a Straits Times editorial noted that caste prejudices received “little or no attention on the estates.”103 The writer suggested that planters should give greater recognition to caste differences on their estates in the interests of attracting more migrants:

In spite of the vigorous work of the Indian Social Reformer, it will take a good many years for India more especially South India - to give up her caste prejudices - and if the planter in this country would do something in respect to this outstanding feature in handling Indian labour it will no doubt go a great way in aiding Indian immigration to this country.104

Caste Hindus on plantations strengthened caste hierarchies by imposing distance and proximity rules on untouchables during religious festivals and in plantation temples and schools. This would have been facilitated by the fact that most head kanganies were from higher caste groups and would often use their close association with religious affairs on the plantation to reinforce the symbolic dominance of their caste and kinsmen. The higher caste coolies on a plantation were usually in charge of temple affairs and the appointment of priests.105 Untouchable identities were also reinforced on the plantation through the inclusion of ritual occupations that were considered unclean in the cultural life of plantation workers. Pariahs, for example, would be paid to beat drums to ward of evil spirits during funerals, Vannans would wash soiled clothes, and Ampattans would moonlight as barbers.106 These symbolic occupations went so far to entrench untouchable identity that in later decades Adi Dravida youth and Tamil reformers who were seeking to uplift the social status of

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 102 “Caste in Malaya,” Straits Times, 10. 103 “Labour in Malaya and Ceylon,” Straits Times, November 10, 1919, 10. 104 Ibid. 105 “Planter’s Complaint: Charge Against Coolies Dismissed,” The Straits Times, July 16, 1925, 10. 106 Jain, South Indians, 105.

! 105! former-untouchables would make a special effort to eliminate these practices.107 The ways in which plantation societies managed to accommodate caste differences and the ritual separation of Hindus into touchable and untouchable explains why caste divisions survived for as long as they did in many parts of Malaya and even persist to certain extent in Malaysia today and remain controversial. This was partially facilitated by kanganies on plantations who exercised their cultural influence to perpetuate caste differences.

However because untouchables were present in relatively large numbers and were often led by lower-ranking kanganies of their own caste, there were frequent inter- caste disputes and challenges to the status quo.108 Even head kanganies were not always drawn from higher caste groups. Since many of the labourers who arrived in the 1870s were from untouchable castes, it is likely that by the early 1900s some had become head kanganies owing to their seniority and experience, and ability to entice their networks. The superintendent of Petaling Estate, T. L. Harvey, reported an incident to the Police Court in Kuala Lumpur in which the higher caste coolies had tried to replace the untouchable who had been head kangany for thirty years with a member from their own caste group.109 Harvey agreed to make their candidate the head kangany for high caste coolies, but refused to dismiss the old kangany, planning to retain him as head kangany for low caste coolies. As a result of this, 335 higher caste workers led by their priest went on strike and some individuals later threatened violence, illustrating the kind of caste tensions that emerged in estates in which the higher castes felt their traditional authority threatened.

In Singapore conditions were very different. On the Malayan peninsula, most Indian labourers resided in relatively isolated plantation communities, however in Singapore most Indian labourers resided in the urban municipality.110 Statute immigration through government funding and contracts had largely been abandoned and most labourers who arrived were officially classed as “free labourers,” meaning that they had arrived independently. However it is likely that many of these labourers arrived !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 107 Ramasamy, Caste Consciousness, 42. 108 Jain noted that in some plantations in his region of study Adi Dravidas comprised up to 85 percent of the total resident Tamil labour force. Jain, South Indians, 263. 109 “Planter’s Complaint: Charge against Coolies Dismissed,” The Straits Times, 10. 110 As late as 1980, 59 percent of Malaysia’s Tamils were still concentrated in plantations in West Malaysia. Clothey, Ritualizing, 9.

! 106! with individuals who resembled kanganies, in so much as they were recruited by them and were indebted to them for their passage. Structurally, mandores and other foreman who didn’t necessarily accompany their subordinates on their initial voyages occupied a very similar position amongst urban and government labourers as kanganies on plantations did amongst tappers. They loaned cash advances to their men, were expected to intervene in their daily problems and as a result were generally held in very high regard by them. J. M. Robson, an assistant district officer and magistrate in Selangor described the relationship between Tamil road overseers and their coolies, claiming that overseers provided advances of money and reigned amongst them “as one of the great men of the earth.”111 According to Robson, the practice amongst Tamil labourers employed in the Public Works Department of getting advances from their foremen was “almost universal” and that without such a system it would have been difficult to attract Tamil coolies for the rates of pay that they received.112

(IMAGE REMOVED)

Figure 3. Tamil labourers and an overseer engaged in roadwork in Singapore in 1880.113 The marked differences in attire highlight the distinctions in rank between overseers and their workers.

The patron-client relationship between the Tamil foreman and their subordinates extended to religious affairs as well. Fred Clothey argues that Pallar and Pariah workmen, who were probably barred from entering temples, constructed makeshift shelters, usually in the name of their higher-caste foremen. Clothey states that the overseers would negotiate with authorities for a space for shrines and would provide funding for the construction of these shrines on the land granted in their name. He argues that this was an act of inter-caste reciprocity that mirrored caste relations in India and reaffirmed the authority of higher caste patrons.114 In so far as building

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 111 John H. M. Robson, People in a Native State (Singapore: Walter Makepeace, 1894), 37. 112 Ibid. 113 Tamil Coolies, c1880s, media image no. 20090000101 – 0011, NAS. 114 As late as 1980, 59 percent of Malaysia’s Tamils were still concentrated in plantations in West Malaysia. Clothey, Ritualizing, 62.

! 107! shrines for deities associated with untouchables facilitated the segregation of the untouchable community from caste Hindus, foremen were able to provide aid to untouchables while reinforcing caste hierarchies by creating a situation in which these hierarchies would not need to be challenged. In this case, the provision of shrines made it unnecessary for untouchables in Malaya to worship at Hindu temples. After Adi Dravida Associations were formed in Malaya in the 1920s, mandores would frequently contribute to donation drives for events and celebrations organised by these associations. The names of contributors would often be highlighted in Tamil newspapers and many would often be suffixed with “mandore.”115 Yet foremen were not at the forefront of the reform movement that sprung up to uplift the Tamil community, eradicate untouchability and caste differences; rather, the contributions that were made by mandores to these organisations can be interpreted as forms of patronage that reinforced their cultural prestige. By the late 1930s, the system of mutual expectations that informed the giving and seeking of donations had been established by longstanding cultural precedents.

Yet is unclear how these relationships originated, or how the mutual expectations they entailed evolved. As Clothey suggests, these relationships were in many ways similar to the inter-caste reciprocities of rural India. In Malaya however, the ritual economy governing relations between foremen and their subordinates was directly tied to the monetary economy, for the cultural capital of these foreman was linked to their function as sources of credit. In urban towns and cities like Singapore, the labourer was not in such a totalising institution as the plantation. The social role of the foreman in Singapore was looser than in plantation communities, where stronger kinship networks and a greater dependency on plantation institutions like the temple grounded the influence of kanganies and the head kangany as an integral feature of everyday life. Workers in Singapore generally experienced more autonomy and freedom of movement, often holding more than one job, and they were increasingly engaged in activities outside their employment and the jurisdiction of their employers. Cooperative and thrift societies began to be established by the 1930s by labourers or

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 115 For example in 1940, faced with financial difficulties, the Singapore Adi Dravida Sangam went on a donation drive through areas where daily-rated government workers were housed. Amongst the individual contributors that were listed in the Tamil Murasu newspaper are several Mandores. “Singapore Adi Dravida Sangam,” Tamil Murasu, November 20, 1940, 2; translated from Tamil by author.

! 108! in some cases by municipal managers and administrators. Labourers who joined these societies would pool their savings and provide loans to fellow members and these societies later came to become more important as sources of credit than foremen. This might have led to foreman losing some of their influence on cultural matters. Around this period Adi Dravida Sangams in Singapore were beginning to be absorbed into the Tamil Reform Movement and the leaders of these movements were becoming very influential figures and opinion leaders, arguably lessening the traditional influence of foremen as well.116

Tamil Labour: Discourse and Practice

From the 1870s, after the drying up of the supply of convict labour in the Straits Settlements, many Tamil arrived there and in the Federated Malay States to meet the labour needs of various municipal and public works authorities as well as to meet the labour requirements of various plantation owners. The discourses that developed about the conditions faced by these migrants suggest that many were from low and untouchable castes and that they travelled to Malaya during this period to escape economic hardships in South India. One of the discourses that developed to justify and encourage labour migration into Malaya in the face of criticisms leveled against harsh conditions and abuses was that caste identity faded overseas and that for untouchable and low caste migrants, travelling overseas was an emancipatory experience that freed them from the oppressive traditions that they faced at home.

Caste was indeed challenged by conditions overseas but the extent to which caste identities and hierarchies were left behind seems to have varied considerably from context to context, and that certain structures inherent in labour recruitment and management created spaces in which caste Hindus could re-assert caste, which many attempted to do. In plantations in Malaya, inter-caste reciprocities were reinforced through the cultural capital that was wielded by kanganies who had power over their subordinates by virtue of their authoritative positions on the estates as well as through the debts that were often owed to them. In urban centers like Singapore, mandores !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 116 The Tamil Reform Movement in Singapore will be discussed in detail in the remaining chapters of this thesis.

! 109! and other foremen also occupied similar roles but these existed in a more open cosmopolitan environment and were arguably weaker. Sustained by strong links with communities in India, caste structures were also established within the boundaries and limitations of official policy and the various cultures of recruitment, housing and labour that were dialogically negotiated between Indian labourers and the relevant authorities. These factors are explored in greater detail in the next chapter, which studies the daily experiences of caste amongst untouchable migrants in Singapore and explores how caste Hindu migrants established and sustained caste practices in the urban and plural environment of the colony.

! 110! Chapter Three

Caste, Untouchability and Public Practice in Singapore

Practices of public exclusion, segregation and discrimination against untouchables were established in Singapore sometime between the 1870s and the turn of the century following the migration a high numbers of Tamil labourers from untouchable castes. In this chapter I will examine some of these practices in greater detail, using a range of sources to explore the everyday lives of untouchable Tamil migrants and their relations with other Tamil Hindu migrants. I argue that transnational social structures and kinship links served as mechanisms of control that governed and sustained inter-caste relations. I also examine the ways in which conditions in Singapore problematised the practice of untouchability and how caste-Hindus resisted challenges posed to caste practice by the ethnically plural environment.

Untouchability in Singapore: An Overview

In addition to untouchable transmarine convicts, who arrived in Singapore from the mid 1820s onward, a small number of untouchable North Indian washermen or dhobies were also resident from as early as 1823.1 These migrants arrived as part of the ‘bazaar contingent’ of service providers who formed an entourage for early Indian military garrisons from the East India Company, and they stayed on in Singapore.2 It was only from the 1870s that Tamil untouchables from the Pallar, Pariah and Chakkilliyar sub-castes began to arrive in Singapore in great numbers. They did so as part of a broader movement of Tamil labour to Malaya to meet the growing labour requirements of plantations, as well as the municipal needs of growing trading hubs like Singapore. Being easily identifiable as untouchables, it is on these Tamil groups that most caste-based prejudice was focused. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 Dhoby Ghaut in Singapore is named after the Indian washer-men who would practice their trade in a stream near the area from the 19th century to the early 20th century. 2 Rai, “Sepoys,” 11.

! 111!

Untouchables were discriminated against in cultural, occupational and religious spheres. In day-to-day life, untouchable interactions with other Hindus were situated in a symbolic economy of performative displays and protocols that not only actualized their inferior status, but aimed at degrading untouchable individuals and creating a debased sense of self-worth amongst them. Untouchables were the subject of various stereotypes, focused on their alleged propensity for drunkenness, violence, and uncouth behaviour, as well as their ostensible lack of hygiene and their intellectual inferiority. Both Mani’s and Rajakrishnan’s interviewees recounted a common Tamil saying, “Parai puthi, arai puthi,” which roughly translated, proclaims that a Pariah’s intelligence is half that of other people.3 That such thinking became framed in a neat, oft-repeated couplet illustrates the deeply embedded nature of such assumptions. Gloria Raheja, who has written about the ways in which Indian proverbs were deployed to entrench colonial discourses about Indian tradition, has identified proverbs as “situated communicative practices on which particularly positioned speakers may draw to define, redefine, reinforce or criticise prevailing social formations.” 4 Another telling indication of the widespread prejudice against untouchables lies in the fact that higher caste Hindus amongst Mani’s interviews considered the word “Paraiyan” a serious insult, admitting that they would resort to violence if they felt that the term had been used to degrade their position.5

An equally important motivation for discriminatory practices was the ritual contamination associated with untouchables simply by virtue of their caste. This latter religious justification remained an essential part of the primary legitimising discourse for caste prejudice. As a result of the troubled history of religion in the British empire in India, and the policy of cultural non-interventionism that was supposed to characterise official British attitudes to caste following the mutiny of 1857, religion was used by Hindus to maintain existing caste-based power differentials and to control access to power-conferring resources. It was especially deployed during negotiations with the governing authorities and with plantation owners with regards to creating facilities for structural separation of labourers according to caste. However !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 3 Mani, “Changing Caste Structure,” 113; Ramasamy, Caste Consciousness, 29. 4 Gloria Goodwin Raheja, “Caste, Colonialism, and the Speech of the Colonized: Entextualization and Disciplinary Control in India,” American Ethnologist 23, no.3 (August 1996): 495-6. 5 Mani, “Changing Caste-Structure,” 113.

! 112! the use of religion as a legitimising discourse for obtaining facilities for the maintenance of caste discrimination was often frustrated by the fact that Indians in Malaya were a minority and largely constituted a socio-economic underclass. Tamil Caste Hindu labourers therefore had significantly less leverage to obtain favourable outcomes from the government authorities outside of occupational spheres that were dominated by Indian labour and especially because such attempts contradicted British efforts to apply a uniform legal code across a diverse, multi-ethnic population.

For Tamil caste Hindus, reasons for maintaining prejudice against untouchables that resided outside of religion, such as poor hygiene, alcoholism and class differences increased in importance overtime. This happened as the use of religion and caste as legitimising reasons for ostracisation and prejudice became less acceptable in what would emerge as a multi-ethnic public sphere in the lead up to independence in the 1950s, and subsequently when the post-colonial under the People’s Action Party attempted to steer national narratives of citizenship based on racial equality and meritocracy as part of their nation-building drive in the 1960s and 1970s. By this stage, discrimination against untouchables was no longer practiced in public, although clear memories of practices of the preceding decades remained amongst the community.

Mani recounts that informants in the 1970s reflected that in Singapore prior to the 1940s, untouchables were not allowed into Hindu homes but had to stand deferentially “on the road with folded arms.”6 When their services were required they were admitted “through the rear-door” to avoid ritually polluting homes with their presence.7 Caste Hindus often went to great lengths to avoid physical contact with untouchables, replicating traditional practices from India. In Singapore, Tamil barbers were primarily members of the Ambattar caste who, while not strictly untouchable, were considered to a “polluting caste” owing to their traditional occupations and their daily contact with human hair.8 Their shops and street stalls contained boxes and

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 6 Ibid., 23. 7 Ibid. 8 For a more detailed analysis of the concepts of pollution and purity in relation to food, physical objects, occupations and ritual associations, refer to Dumont, Homo Hierarchichus, 6. Members of this caste in Singapore referred to themselves as ‘Maruthuvars’, rather than Ambattars. “Some Speeches at the Maruthuvar Sangam,” Tamil Murasu, November 3, 1940, 6. ‘Maruthuvar’ is the Tamil word for doctor and is a possible reference to their traditional caste association with healing and medicine. The

! 113! drawers with holes for customers to drop their payment into to help them avoid having to touch the hands of the barbers.9

A story in the Straits Times published in 1904 described a public spectacle involving caste protocol in Penang, which was also a Straits Settlements colony and shared a similar ethnic composition and physical environment. In one of the main streets of the town, a Chettiar moneylender trying to recover his loan was seen trying to avoid entering the home of an untouchable. The moneylender finally resorted to using a stick thrust through a gap in the untouchable’s home to pull the money towards himself while awkwardly attempting to maintain his balance, much to the amusement of a gathered crowd.10 The effort to which the individuals in these anecdotal accounts would go to to avoid physical contact with untouchables is hardly unique for the period. 19th and 20th century textual records and even contemporary scholarly work abound with records of untouchables in India being subject to similar ritual distancing, often under far more extreme circumstances.

This incident however, occurred in Penang. These practices serve as an example of the ways that recent immigrants attempted to establish cultural continuities in overseas contexts. The story about the moneylender’s behaviour illustrates how such attempts to maintain caste practices could potentially be frustrated by ethnic pluralism, where the presence of the majority Chinese in many aspects of public life had the potential to disrupt and destabilize traditional social hierarchies. The way the reporter framed the story and the details that were provided reflect how the ethnic plurality present in urban environments in Malaya granted untouchables greater leeway during the early years of the 19th century to challenge the imposition of an inferior caste status. The amusement of the crowd suggests that the wider population did not recognise caste difference and instead often viewed caste prejudice as a somewhat ludicrous cultural curiosity. The reporter also stated that the article itself was written to inform readers about aspects of “caste etiquette” that were “not generally known” in Malaya. 11 The article also describes how the untouchable was

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! name change also no doubt represents an attempt at raising the status of the caste group, by utilising the more modern associations between the medical profession and notions of class and respectability. 9 V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 24, 2011. 10 “A Chitty Outwitted,” Straits Times, October 17, 1904, 10. 11 Ibid.

! 114! deliberately challenging the moneylender’s claim to caste superiority by presenting it as an absurdity and ridiculing it in front of the crowd that had gathered to watch the incident unfold. The very title of the story, “A Chitty Outwitted” is indicative of the general angle of the piece, which was cast to portray the Chettiar moneylender in a comical light. This news piece highlights the changing power dynamics that occurred in areas where Hindus were a minority.

In Malaya, Indians were a racial minority, a numerical reality that militated against the easy application of caste and untouchability. In heavily urbanised environments like Singapore, despite the prevalence and growth of ethnic enclaves, members of different ethnic communities encountered each other and were linked in varying degrees by economic and social interdependencies that existed outside of caste paradigms.12 This was a sharp contrast to the social experiences of Tamils and Telugus who ended up in the racially enclosed world of Malayan plantations.13 This meant increasing encounters and contact with groups and individuals for whom caste had no significance or who were simply unable to recognise caste hierarchies between Hindus.14 Tamil labourers were noted to “mix easily” amongst Chinese and Malay communities and the widespread grasp amongst them of basic Malay, then the lingua franca in Malaya, was seen as evidence of this.15

It was also common for Tamil government labourers to travel around the island daily, after their regular shifts had ended by mid-afternoon, to pursue secondary employment as gardeners or in other jobs to supplement their meager income.16 The !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 12 By 1911, 83.7 percent of Singapore’s population was classified as urban. This figure dropped to 82.6 percent a decade later in 1921 as more individuals began to move into rural villages or kampongs. The urban population nevertheless remained consistently high. Nathan, Census of British Malaya 1921, 28. 13 T. Marimuthu, “Integration, Assimilation, or Multiple Identities: The Case of the Malaysian Indian Diaspora,” in Diversities in the Indian Diaspora: Nature, Implications, Responses, ed. N. Jayaram (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012), 71. 14 By the time of the 1891 census, Tamils in Singapore were found in the highest numbers in Municipal districts in which they constituted a minority. For at least two decades, the area marked as Division G, which was bounded by the Rochor River in the north, the coast along the southeast and European settlement to the west contained the highest number of Tamils in the Singapore. It was also one of the most populated zones on the island therefore total number of Tamils there remained proportionally small. Unlike the adjacent Division H, which encompassed Serangoon Road and Jalan Besar, Division G was not an Indian enclave and was racially mixed. There the Chinese community constituted a substantial majority of the residents. Merewether, Census 1891, 37-53. 15 “Dips Into Life Behind the Cooly Lines,” The Indian, May 23, 1936, 5. 16 The Indian newspaper noted that South Indian labourers in towns supplemented their income by working as “gardeners, lamplighters, wood-choppers, and water carriers.” Ibid., 4-5, v; Tamizhmaraiyan and Thyagarajan Panghanathan, interview by author, December 12, 2010.

! 115! movements of Tamil untouchable migrants, most of whom were employed in government service, was therefore not restricted to narrow geographical areas or ethnic enclaves where caste prejudice was strongest. Contact with other communities would have been fairly common and untouchable labourers would find themselves occupying multiple zones of reference, some in which their caste had no salience. They would then encounter scenarios in which they found themselves inhabiting a space left open by the absence of an externally over-determined identity rooted on caste.17

Locally-born Indians and Tamils and those who identified themselves as Malayan Indians often disregarded caste prejudice. Straits-born Tamils who had been in Malaya for many generations ignored the caste stigma placed on untouchable individuals and did not impose proximity rules on them.18 Although Indian labourers in general, who were nicknamed “Ramasamys” or “Samys” by English-speaking communities in Malaya, were generally held in low regard by many segments of Singaporean society by virtue of their class, occupations and race, untouchable workers would have certainly noted the absence of excessive caste proximity rules in their dealings with other communities.19

Many other aspects of urban life disrupted the traditional reciprocities that grounded inter-caste relations in a rural setting. Notes and coinage for instance, the fundamental mode of economic transaction in the money , presented one of many challenges to Hindus. Untouchable workers in Malaya earned a cash wage and it was impossible for many caste Hindus to avoid monetary exchanges with them, especially in Indian enclaves and areas where touchable and untouchable communities resided next to each other. Rules were created to minimise physical contact during such exchanges. Untouchables were made to leave temple donations on the ground outside temple entrances so that they would not have to come into contact with priests.20 Lakshmi Naidu, who was interviewed by the National Heritage

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 17 This however did not preclude them from experiencing the over-determination of their identities that arose on the basis of their colour, race, class or occupation. 18 Sellapan Ramanathan, interview by author, February 16, 2011; Krishnan, Indians in Malaya, 26. Class also seems to also have taken precedence over caste in Tamil Protestant communities in Singapore. Bishop Theodore Doraisamy, Acc. No. 000530, 33, Reel: 13, Oral History Centre, NAS. 19 “Dips Into Life Behind the Cooly Lines,” The Indian, 4-5. 20 Lakshmi Naidu, Acc. No. 000110, Reel: 5, Oral History Centre, NAS.

! 116! Board in Singapore, remembers that during the 1930s, apart from asking untouchables to leave their rent outside the doorstep of their family home, her landlord father would also dip the money in water to cleanse it.21

These examples are illustrative of attempts by immigrants to impose what Mani has referred to as “distance maintenance” or the development of rules governing inter- caste relations. These were aimed at reinforcing the traditional rural hierarchies that oriented relations between castes.22 Much of it was based on established village practices that governed bodily comportment, physical proximity and modes of speech between untouchables and non-untouchables. Attempts to impose these rules were partly motivated by anxieties that allowing untouchable migrants to experience a more liberal social environment overseas would have a progressive effect on their kin and caste communities in India. Remittances from untouchables in Singapore back to their communities had already begun to improve infrastructure and educational levels in their villages. By sharing their experiences of life in a more progressive social environment they were also recalibrating expectations in India, increasing the desire for social uplift and imagining an end to dehumanizing practices of discrimination.23 Much has been written about how later attempts to reform caste practices in Singapore were couched in the language, intellectual ideas and worldview of reformers in India.24 Far less attention has been paid to ways that the presence of untouchables in Malaya and elsewhere overseas played an important role in spreading ideas about the discourse of equality and rights. Transnational family networks introduced real and imagined alternatives to India, rupturing the perceived normativity of daily prejudice against untouchables through information obtained about overseas conditions.

The impact of untouchable emigration is demonstrated by the fact that travelling overseas was widely seen amongst Tamils in South India as a means for untouchables to escape caste persecution. In a speech the social reformer E.V. Ramasamy Naicker

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 21 Ibid. 22 Mani, “Changing Caste-Structure,” 29-30. 23 “Caste in Malaya,” Straits Times, 10; V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 24, 2011. 24 For comprehensive overview, refer to the work of Dinesh Sathisan. Dinesh Sathisan, “Speaking for the Diaspora: Tamil Newspapers in Malaya and Singapore as Instruments of Modernity, Protection, Reform and Change, 1930-40,” The Heritage Journal 4 (2009): 74-96

! 117! delivered in Siruvathoor in 1929, he encouraged untouchables to stand up to caste prejudice in their villages. If attempts to improve their situation there failed, he suggested moving into towns and adopting a new religion. If that still did not bring about an improvement in social conditions, he suggested that as a final resort, untouchables should travel overseas to work as coolies, reflecting a widespread belief about the emancipatory potential of overseas migration.25 However the expectations that some untouchable immigrants had of a more liberal and progressive environment in Singapore did not align with the reality they experienced once they arrived. An interviewee’s father, an untouchable immigrant who arrived in Singapore in the 1920s, recalled the surprise that he and his fellow untouchable migrants felt when they discovered that untouchables were still discriminated against there.26 Instead of a more progressive social environment, many of these immigrants discovered that Hindu migrants from higher castes actively resisted perceived threats to the caste status quo and sought ways to expand the cultural domain in which the protocol governing inter-caste relations could be expanded, creating truly ‘translocal’ spheres of cultural practice in Singapore, in which cultural norms previously salient only in limited geographical regions of India were extended overseas.

The Translocal Sphere of Cultural Practice: Kinship Networks and the Self- Policing of Caste

One of the strongest motivating factors that informed attempts by Hindu migrants to re-establish caste boundaries was the presence of networks of transnational surveillance, usually operative in the form of individuals from the labourer’s village or region of origin. Selvaraj Velayutham and Amanda Wise have written an auto- ethnographic account of Velayutham’s Musugunthar Vellala caste community in contemporary Singapore.27 The Musugunthar Vellala community is relatively unique, maintaining close ties with their wider translocal community in India, to an extent not seen in many other caste-conscious groups in Singapore today. Velayutham and Wise !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 25 “The Deplorable Condition of the Adi Dravidas,” Kudi Arasu, January 16, 1929, 5; translated from Tamil by author. 26 V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview with author, December 24, 2011. 27 Selvaraj Velayutham and Amanda Wise, “Moral Economies of a Translocal Village: Obligation and Shame among South Indian Transnational Migrants,” Global Networks 5, no. 1 (January 2005): 27-47.

! 118! describe how translocal caste networks create a real and imagined network of surveillance, which in turn results in self-policing by individual members and family units to ensure that the social behaviour of overseas members of the community falls within the boundaries of caste protocol.28 The study explores how relationships are maintained through the construction of a moral economy based on mutual obligation, shame and duty within the extended family unit. It explains how contraventions of caste protocol by individuals overseas have the potential to bring shame to family members in a village in India, based on the presence of members of the community overseas, which results in the self-regulation of behaviour.

While the contemporary communication networks that Wise and Velayutham describe are far more rapid than anything that was available in the past, there are nonetheless some interesting similarities between the Musugunthar Vellala community and the ways in which Hindu immigrants in Singapore in the past maintained caste identities overseas as a result of the presence in Singapore of kinsmen or other immigrants from their villages or regions of origin. As explored earlier, immigration trends and modes of labour recruitment in certain occupations greatly increased the possibility of fresh immigrants arriving from the same villages and regions as existing immigrants. In Singapore, the presence of Tamil immigrants from certain villages encouraged others from that particular village to make the journey creating small village and Taluk (district) diaspora communities on the island.29 This is evidenced by the growth of numerous caste associations that sprouted on the island from the 1920s that were named after villages, Taluks and regions in the Madras Presidency.30

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 28 Ibid., 28. 29 Charles Tilly has discussed the important role of social networks in establishing patterns of circular and chain migration amongst immigrants to America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He cites the work of another scholar, Josef Barton, who studied the migration patterns of Italian, Rumanian and Slovakian immigrants in Cleveland. Barton noted that Italian migration was distinct in that it was characterised by the formation of major village chains and that this resulted in a strong reinforcement of cultural loyalties within Italian organisations. It is interesting to note that the circular migration of Tamil migrants to Malaya strengthened their ties to their villages and regions of origins and had a similar effect by reinforcing cultural continuities. Charles Tilly, “Transplanted Networks,” in Immigration Reconsidered: History, Sociology and Politics, ed. Virginia Yans-Maclauglin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 88-91. Tilly also describes how the high rate of return amongst European immigrants in America to their regions of origin reinforced further migration from the same areas resulting in the migration of entire social networks. Ibid., 85. 30 Mani, “Changing Caste-Structure,” 215-7, v; Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 24 and 31, 2011.

! 119! The increasing size of the Tamil population after the 1890s meant that more and more Tamil labourers were coming into contact with others from the same districts, which increased the salience of identities that were rooted in smaller localized contexts in India. Foremost amongst this was caste identity. Immigrants sought out others from the same villages and regions for protection and support, forming associations and cooperative societies. In addition to being regionally based, many of these associations were also formed around overlapping caste and kinship networks. In the case of Adi Dravida Associations, some were initially formed as a means by which labourers from the same districts in the Madras Presidency could pool their resources and share accommodation, as not all daily rate labourers were housed in government quarters. Dozens would share a living space in two-storey shophouses in the Jalan Besar area.31 These shophouses later also doubled as the headquarters for various caste associations. These associations also functioned as cooperative thrift and savings societies. Individuals were allowed to borrow money from the combined savings of their fellow association members. These groups also began to pool their resources together and send it back to their villages in India for the construction of schools, water tanks, roads and other collective infrastructural improvements.32 While not as large or as well organised as Chinese clan and Kongxi associations, these groupings served a similar function in rallying immigrants together based on an externally-based sense of belonging and they became an important source of social support for new migrants.

Higher caste groups also formed organisations and maintained links with kinsmen and village networks in India. These organisations not only became a focal point for new migrants, but also served to entrench caste identity. They too became a rallying point for immigrants to maintain transnational links with their overseas village communities. Through membership of these organisations, individuals were able to update themselves on the latest news from home and they served as a means for individuals to organise financial resources to help improve their communities. The intensely localized focus of such groups and the functional role that they played in maintaining transnational connections with small overseas caste communities meant

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 31 V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 24 32 Ibid.

! 120! that despite the presence of organisations in Malaya, such as the all-Malaya Adi Dravida Association (which stressed a pan-untouchable identity and included all Tamil untouchables of various castes), the majority of Adi Dravida associations remained rooted not only in the identity of specific sub-castes but particularly in specific villages and regions as well, because of the close relationship between the secondary functions played by these organisations and overseas village communities. Further contributing to this phenomenon was the absence of a dominant established culture into which immigrants could aspire to assimilate. Establishing ethnic boundaries, cultivating difference and preventing the growth of a common cultural space were also aims that were built into the governing philosophy and the resulting governmental apparatus of the British authorities in Singapore.

Networks and Identity

Gabriel Sheffer has drawn an interesting distinction between transnational networks and communities, and ethnonational .33 He argues that scholarly trends within migration and diaspora studies have tended to collapse the distinctions between these groups of migrants.34 His particular concern is that the contemporary rise of ethnonationalism cannot be fully understood by paradigms that exist in transnational studies and that a clear distinction should be made between diaspora studies and transnational studies in order to gain an awareness of any methodological limitations that may have emerged as result of different focuses inherent to both disciplines.35 His argument hinges on the exact definition of diaspora, and he argues that a requirement of classifying a particular group as belonging to a diaspora is that the group consciously views belonging to an external ‘national’ community as an integral part

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 33 Gabriel Sheffer, “Transnationalism and Ethnonational Diasporism,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 15, no.1 (Spring 2006): 121. Bahar Baser and Ashok Swain have also argued that the term ‘diaspora’ is under the threat of “concept stretching” because of its over-use within academia and by journalists. They state that although academics like Sheffer have criticised the slipperiness of the term, they have nonetheless created and used their own definitions such that it today differs from scholar to scholar. Bahar Baser and Ashok Swain, “Stateless Diaspora Groups and their Repertoires of Nationalist Activism in Host Countries,” Journal of International Relations 8, no. 1 (2010): 38-39. 34 Sheffer, “Transnationalism,” 122. 35 Ibid., 126.

! 121! of its self-definition.36 Here it is also useful to reiterate Ashok Swain’s argument about the main concern surrounding the ambiguity inherent in the use of the term ‘diaspora.’ He argues that the central issue lies with whether diaspora is an essential or constructed category. Within the essentialist viewpoint is the argument that diasporas are the natural result of dispersion or migration, where kinship ties and cultural affinity automatically result in identity narratives that are roughly analogous to those that exist in places of origin. However, other scholars argue that diasporas are a result of political mobilisation and that diasporic identity is a heavily constructed project, forming in response to agency and will rather than being a naturally occurring phenomenon. His description of the essentialist view of diaspora echoes Sheffer’s classification of transnational communities, in that both categories involve the organic transplantations of networks, which while dynamic and open to change, are far more determined by pre-existing cultural ties. However the diaspora as defined by Sheffer or diaspora as imagined by the constructivist ideas highlighted by Swain, involve a conscious act of creation as well as an acute awareness of an individual’s or community’s dislocation in an overseas environment. The experience of Tamil migrants to Singapore arguably contained elements of both kinds of cultural creation and transplantation.

Applying both Sheffer’s and Swain’s conceptual distinctions are therefore useful in understanding the mechanics of identity evolution amongst the Tamils in Singapore. In terms of self-identification, Tamil labourers, although aware of their categorisation as Indians by the British administration, initially saw greater day-to-day salience in regarding themselves as part of translocal communities rather than as part of diasporic communities. They drew their social identities and material support from village and kinship networks, and the basis of their social interactions were derived from codes established within smaller spatial regions and notions of obligation and duty to family members. From the 1920s, the spread of Indian nationalist ideology to Malaya, previously the exclusive preserve of the English-educated white collar Indian elites who derived benefits from identifying with British India as a unified political entity, began to enter the social consciousness of Tamil labourers as well. This was partially due to the efforts of these Indian elites who popularised the Indian National Congress

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 36 Ibid., 128.

! 122! and its pan-Indian ethos as a means to legitimise their claims to leadership over the entire Indian community in Malaya.

In the 1930s, Tamil Reformist leaders in Singapore, influenced by E.V. Ramasamy’s Self Respect Movement in the Tamil regions of the Madras Presidency began to also articulate a new idea of Tamil identity based on what by the late 1930s became linked to the idea of a separate autonomous Tamil nation state. While these ideas entered into the consciousness of the Tamil immigrant working classes, the paradigm of the transnational community is a much more accurate representation of the node around which identity was negotiated and this is a crucial factor in explaining why caste identities survived as long as they did, and why the loosening of these connections at a later stage was a precursor to the lowered cultural salience of caste. Pan-Indian nationalism, which became the primary identity narrative amongst Indians in Malaya during the Japanese occupation, and the linguistically-defined Tamil identity that came after it in the post-war period both offered a much stronger ideological framework for tackling caste prejudice once they had gained significant resonance amongst the Tamil population. Both ideological trends were led by small groups and individuals who disavowed caste and who maintained relatively tight control over the framing of identity narratives. 37 They steered the negotiation of a normative Indianness or Tamilness into a more egalitarian direction, at least in the sense that both identities were meant to be inherently casteless.

For the urban working class, the transnational extension of village-based identity orientations was a trend that allowed caste to be strengthened. The increasing concentrations of individuals from particular regions created conditions for the effective carrying-over of systems of caste hierarchy that relied on an intimate knowledge of regional sub-castes and their relative positions within that order.

Due to the fact that caste hierarchy was based on the recognition of translocal categories, some untouchable Tamils changed their surnames to higher caste Tamil names, caste-neutral Tamil names, or Telugu or Malayalee caste names that could not

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 37 This will be dealt with in much greater detail in the next chapter.

! 123! be easily inserted into regional Tamil caste hierarchies.38 The father of one my interviewees did this after arriving in Singapore in 1929 at the age of seventeen. Being the only member of his village in Singapore at the time, he changed his surname to Veerasamy at little risk of being identified. He was able to later acquire a job as a gardener in a naval base, a vocation that would have been difficult for an untouchable to obtain, given the sensitivities of other caste Hindus.39 Individuals who changed their names sometimes managed to fashion completely new identities for themselves and escape the prejudices directed at their castes.

Despite the fact that migration to an urbanized colony presented immigrants with the opportunity to shed their caste identities, few seem to have applied this strategy. Those who were in close proximity with kinsmen or other Hindu Tamils from their areas of origin could not easily avail themselves of this window of reinvention. Those who did so not only cut themselves off from the potential social support of caste associations, but they risked discovery from other Hindu Tamils from their villages, something which may have had negative consequences on their kinsmen in India. From the 1930s onwards, more Adi Dravidas were actively engaged in social reform activities and became more concerned with achieving group mobility because of their intention to return to India; they did not seek to disguise their caste identities but displayed group solidarity publicly.

The extension of kinship networks transnationally also affected the ways in which higher caste individuals negotiated caste overseas. The presence of kin meant having to be wary of being seen as more culturally permissive in Singapore. They had more of an incentive to maintain distinctions between themselves and untouchables lest they brought shame to their families in India. In the 1950s, Nalini Schooling researched the caste attitudes of Tamil Hindu labourers in Singapore, focusing primarily on employees of the Singapore Harbour Board.40 Based on the sensitivity of the topic, she avoided asking direct questions about their attitudes to caste, instead playing an audio recording of a drama and asking the workers about their opinions on

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 38 Nalini Schooling also noted that in Singapore in the 1950s, some untouchables who had acquired wealth had taken on the name ‘Pillai,’ a name usually associated with the Vellalar caste. Schooling, “Study of Caste Practices,” 29. 39 V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 24 and 31, 2011. 40 Schooling, “Study of Caste Practices.”

! 124! the actions of certain characters. The drama was about a character called Muthu, a Tamil immigrant who wanted to marry a lower caste girl he had met in Singapore, despite his family’s protestations in India.41 The project displayed a dramatic shift in Tamil social attitudes since the 1920s and 1930s. Schooling noted that the majority of her participants were more inclined to profess liberal views against caste when asked questions in a group setting, but that this however was not reflective of their private opinions.42 The study also indicates that the moral economy of caste practice was highly contextual, dependent on location, the situation and the perceived or potential effects on family members and kinsmen. Some participants regarded the character Muthu as selfish because he had chosen not to consider the effects of his relationship on his parents and grandparents, who faced ridicule from the wider community in India.43 It was noted that as a result of his actions, his sisters were facing difficulties marrying men of their own caste.44 Of considerable importance was not the actual act of contravening caste norms, but the negative social effects that would occur if members of the community came to know about it, and the perceived selfishness involved in willfully exposing one’s family to this risk.

Many interviewees noted that the same standards did not apply for people who intended to stay in Singapore, as for those who intended to go back or at least return frequently to India. When it came to transgressing social boundaries with low caste Hindus and untouchables, interviewees generally granted more leeway for those who intended to stay in Singapore to do so. Some participants claimed that one character would have been justified in opposing the marriage in India, but not in Singapore.45 One reason cited for this was that community ostracism was not as harmful in Singapore as it was in India.46 A participant noted that if his brother married a Pariah woman, he would not have minded visiting the couple if they were based in Singapore, but not if they were in India.47 Another participant from the Vellala caste stated that he had previously married a widow from the untouchable Padayatchi caste

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 41 Ibid., 44. 42 Ibid., 67. 43 Ibid.,.44. 44 Ibid., 45. 45 Ibid., 44. 46 Ibid., 79. 47 Ibid.

! 125! in Singapore, but was not able to return to India until she died.48 Yet another indicated that unlike in Singapore, in India it would be difficult to remain friends with someone who had married an untouchable because of public pressure and community ostracism.49

By the late 1950s, when Schooling’s research was conducted, immigration laws were being much more strictly enforced.50 This resulted in a dramatic cut to the inflow of new migrants from India and also in more existing Indian migrants making the decision to stay in Malaya as future citizens. The political distancing between Singapore and India during this period appears to have been mirrored by a separation of both areas into increasingly distinct spheres of caste practice, governed by rules tied to differing levels of kin and community surveillance. Such a distinction was less salient during earlier periods characterised by more frequent two-way travel and closer group links between both areas. Schooling’s interviews reveal another important aspect of caste identities in Singapore. Rather than being primarily motivated by private beliefs in ritual purity and pollution, adherence to caste rules seem to have been motivated more by the fear of community sanctions, with the result they were most strictly adhered to when surveillance mechanisms were perceived to be strong. This is an important point to consider when seeking explanations for the later decline of caste sentiment in Singapore’s public sphere.

Demographic Trends and the Introduction of Caste Prejudice

A. Mani suggested that prior to 1929, the year he marks out as the beginning of the Tamil reform movement in Singapore, there existed a “caste continuum” in which caste practices in Singapore were simply a carry over of practices in India.51 Caste practices in Singapore however evolved over time, undergoing a period of strengthening around the closing years of the 19th century. It is important to highlight this point because simply accepting that institutions of caste were unproblematically !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 48 Ibid., 70. 49 Ibid., 77. 50 Arasaratnam, Indians in Malaysia, 41. 51 1929 is the year Mani marks out as the beginning of Tamil journalism in Singapore. Mani, “Changing Caste-Structure,” 28.

! 126! brought over at an early period prevents a deeper understanding of how a culture of caste was established and what this can reveal to us about identity negotiation and the attempts of immigrants to cope with the cultural ruptures that accompanied de- territorialisation.

It was around the early 20th century that the growing size of the Tamil population lessened the need for social contact and identification with other Indian groups from different religious, ethno-linguistic and even regional backgrounds in Indian enclaves.52 This would have been an essential pre-condition for the establishment of caste protocol governing behaviour and the introduction of untouchability. Around the turn of the century, Serangoon Road, an area originally ear-marked by colonial planners as an Indian enclave, began to shed its sub-ethnic diversity, becoming a predominantly Tamil zone. Caste rules in Singapore were seldom recognised or actively enforced between Indians from different ethno-linguistic backgrounds. Apart from language differences, the lack of deeper social interaction between many groups prevented any meaningful inter-caste reciprocities from occurring. Specific castes or jatis often only found a hierarchical position within localized caste systems.53 The knowledge of particular caste hierarchies generally requires an acquaintance with the specific regions of India from which those castes originated. Rajesh Rai has noted that demographic shifts in Indian migratory trends strengthened regional and ethnic boundaries in Singapore, which in turn facilitated the strengthening of caste boundaries.54 Prior to 1901 therefore, it is unlikely that suitable conditions were present for the establishment of discriminatory practices against untouchable Tamils in this area.

The 1891 census report for Singapore reveals that Tamils comprised less than half the total number of Indians in the Serangoon Road and Jalan Besar area and that they were outnumbered by and individuals of other Indian ethnicities.55 This

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 52 Resistance by immigrants against the consolidation of sub-ethnic identities into larger ‘racial’ or national categories is a feature that accompanied the migration of many other groups in other parts of the world. Charles Tilly notes that in the , Piedmontese, Neapolitans, Sicilians and Romans did not always become “Italians”, but that this was dependent upon the networks’ “size, density and relation to other groups.” Tilly, “Transplanted Networks,” 85. 53 Dumont, Homo Hierarchichus, 196-9. 54 Rai, “Homogenisation and Fragmentation,” 7. 55 Mereweather, Census 1891, appendix G.

! 127! figure changes by the 1901 census, when Tamils become a majority amongst the Indian community in the area, imbuing it with a distinctly Tamil character.56 The ethnic heterogeneity of the area prior to this casts doubt on its capacity to accommodate practices against untouchables on the scale discussed in this chapter. Indian sub-ethnicity also intersected with caste practice. Not only were Hindu temples later divided along North and South Indian lines, but within this taxonomy Tamils, especially non-Brahmin Tamils, were often considered to be of a lower caste by virtue of their ethnic identity.57 Ram Dular Singh, in his interview with the Oral History Department of the National Archives of Singapore, recalls that before the Second World War, a marriage between a Bihari man and a Tamil woman caused a stir amongst the Bihari community and that the community considered the man an “outcaste” because of the marriage.58

I would argue that the exclusion of untouchables from Hindu temples across the island, represented a cultural innovation brought over by a later period of Tamil immigration from the 1870s onward. Prior to this, rules were much less adhered to. Hindus in Singapore worshipped in temples and shrines scattered around the island. At least twelve major Hindu temples existed before the Second World War, and there were many smaller structures and shrines that tended to be far more temporary.59 There are not enough archival sources to ascertain what polices these temples held regarding entry for untouchables during the earlier half of the 19th century. Fred Clothey suggests that untouchables were probably not allowed into temples, citing the lack of any evidence to the contrary. Owing to the strength of caste feeling amongst most Hindus in India during that period it was probably the case that traders and caste Hindus amongst the relatively small number of indentured and free labourers that were present on the island prior to the 1870s would have resisted the entry of untouchables into temples.60

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 56 J.R. Innes, Report on the Census of the Straits Settlements 1901 (Singapore: Government Printing Office, 1901), 44. 57 The reasons for this will be discussed in the next chapter where I will trace the intellectual currents that informed the growth of Tamil nationalism. 58 Ram Dular Singh, Acc. No. 001286, Reel: 3/ 4, Oral History Centre, NAS. 59 For a list of some of these temples refer to J. P. Mialaret, Hinduism in Singapore: A Guide to the Hindu Temples of Singapore (Singapore: Asia Pacific Press, 1969), 38-65. 60 As a result of exclusion from temples, untouchables worshipped at their own shrines, dedicated to village deities like Muneeswaran. Many of these shrines were located close to the quarters of municipal labourers. Two prominent shrines were set up in Jalan Besar and Lavendar Street that were probably

! 128!

However, it is highly likely that only untouchables who maintained a visibly recognizable untouchable identity during the 19th century would have been subjected to overt forms of exclusion, and that a much higher degree of ambiguity existed with regards to the caste identities of Indians on the island. A smaller population, with less caste-based occupational specification and smaller ethno-linguistic concentrations would have made it far more difficult to identify untouchables who were not engaged in occupations associated with their caste. Additionally, levels of caste-based prejudice amongst higher caste Hindus would have been greatest amongst those who maintained strong kinship links in India or those who had close links with communities of Hindus that did. In the 19th century, this would have excluded many ex-transmarine convicts who had severed familial connections with India, adopted new forms of marriage and social stratification, and had made the decision to spend the rest of their lives on the island. British interventions had imparted specialised occupational training to convicts, regardless of previous social status. The link between low-wage and undesirable occupations and caste status would therefore have been much looser for these individuals.61

This was not the case during the post-convict phase, when the most undesirable municipal jobs were allocated to new untouchable immigrants and it was fairly easy to determine a government worker’s caste standing based on his vocation. Members of the Pariah caste predominantly staffed the Public Cleansing Division of the municipal authority, which dealt with waste removal and road sweeping.62 It was therefore much easier to recognize and establish the caste of untouchables during this phase, and so it would have also been easier to implement a temple ban against their entry. Temple restrictions may have begun to be enforced more rigorously from 1872

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! used by Pariah and Pallan municipal labourers. S. Ramachandra, a resident of the area in 1923, recalled that Tamil labourers would be seen sacrificing cockerels and offering “samsu” and toddy at these shrines, which had vanished by 1950. “When Jalan Besar Was a Swamp,” Straits Times, July 6, 1950, 8. 61 A number of occupations during the 19th century would have been associated with low caste or untouchable caste status due to ritual associations, or the necessity for those involved in particular occupations to come into contact with animal carcasses. The Straits Settlements Census report of 1881 records some of the number of Indians involved in these occupations. These included 103 barbers, a soap boiler, a tanner and 425 washermen, and 48 butchers and pork sellers. It is unclear how many of these individuals were Muslim, but it is likely that the pork sellers, washermen (dhobies), and barbers were primarily from low caste Hindu communities. Dunlop et al., Census 1881, 17. 62 Schooling, “Study of Caste Practices,” 62.

! 129! onwards, when low caste and untouchable immigrants began to replace convicts as municipal labourers. Clothey argues that the number of Indian coolies used in the cleaning of streets and latrines increased by the turn of the century, indicating that there was a rise in the number of untouchable immigrants whose caste was visually evident by the end of the 19th century.63

At the turn of the century, inter-ethnic boundaries were strengthened in Singapore as the population increased, expanding the scope for communities to practice endogamy. By the early twentieth century, Bishop Oldham, the Bishop of the Methodist Church in Singapore noted that there was there was “very little intercourse” amongst the various ethnic communities.” 64 This was true to an extent. In the case of Tamils, the growth of ethnic enclaves as focal points for immigrants created the conditions for the introduction of public forms of discrimination against untouchables. However in Singapore it was impossible to completely escape the impact of a multi-ethnic environment and this had the effect of challenging the imposition of caste identities on untouchables. For immigrants intending to return to India, who sought marriage partners from India or who had to simply consider the status of family members back home, the imagined gaze of the translocal community increased during this period, resulting in the tighter regulation of relations with members of untouchable castes.

Diversity in Caste Practice

The process of establishing cultural continuity between Malaya and South India and standardizing caste protocol was a difficult enterprise that was never entirely successful. Malaya was a highly contested cultural space, to which immigrants brought very heterogeneous worldviews and expectations that were influenced by a conscious awareness of the fluidity and space for negotiating cultural practices. Issues often arose as a result of the fact that new arrivals and longer-term migrants often had different expectations of inter-caste relations. A newspaper report also noted that many of the quarrels that occurred between Adi Dravidas and higher caste Hindu !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 63 Clothey, Ritualizing, 62. 64 William Fitzjames Oldham, Malaysia: Nature’s Wonderland (Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham, 1907), 30.

! 130! Tamils in Malaya occurred when newcomers arrived from overseas with different assumptions.65 The higher caste Hindus on one plantation in 1935 complained that the Adi Dravidas who had been in Malaya for a longer period of time “did not exhibit the same respectful inferiority as in India.”66

The attempts by higher caste Tamil migrants to create protocols to govern relations between themselves and untouchables were in some ways aimed at reviving the symbolic inter-caste reciprocities of village life. This was perhaps especially characteristic of life in the plantations where Tamil Hindus of various castes came into intimate contact which each other on a daily basis. Pariahs would for instance be paid to beat drums at funerals, a service considered ritually defiling and a means to justify prejudice and overcome the leveling effects of having an egalitarian distribution of labour and salaries across the labouring population on plantations.67

In more urbanised areas like Singapore, efforts to preserve the lower status of untouchables were conducted in a manner that reflected anxieties about the social ambiguities that accompanied a far more complex distribution of race, employment, housing and status. More effort was expended trying to ensure the minimisation of contact and fraternisation between untouchable and non-untouchable Hindus and to prevent a merging of cultural life. One manifestation of this was the imposition and subsequent policing of zones of physical separation within the urban landscape of Singapore. Besides being barred from the homes and kampongs (villages) of higher caste Tamil migrants, untouchables were not allowed in most Hindu temples across Malaya until 1947.68 Perhaps one of the most striking ways physical segregation was observed was in the subdivision of several Indian enclaves into touchable and untouchable zones that were usually separated by a road. The spatial separation of communities into zones according to caste mirrors the ways in which Indian villages !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 65 “Dips Into Life Behind the Cooly Lines,” The Indian, 5. 66 Ibid. 67 Jain, South Indians, 126; Ramasamy, Caste Consciousness, 40. A request was made in 1936 by the All Malaya Adi Dravida Association to the colonial government in Malaya to stop issuing licenses for untouchable caste Tamils to beat tom toms. It was believed that such a change would facilitate an elevation in status because it would lessen associations with ritual impurity. “Disorderly Scenes at Conference: Objection to “Derogatory” Description: Strong Opposition of Tamil Reform Party,” The Singapore Free Press Mercantile Advisor, 3. 68 Temple committees in Malaya took this decision after the Japanese Occupation. Indian social reformers in Malaya, however, inspired by similar movements in India, had been campaigning for temple entry for untouchable since the mid 1930s.

! 131! were divided into an ur or touchable Hindu village and cheri or untouchable Hindu hamlet, which were often separated by fields and roads.69 This practice occurred in areas like Joo Chiat, Havelock Road and Jalan Besar, where untouchable workers from the Public Cleansing Division of the Public Works Department and the City Council were housed.70

Rules of segregation were only enforced for untouchable immigrants who were barred from certain areas with the threat of beatings.71 These established boundaries were more porous for touchable Hindus who entered the Jalan Besar area to patronize coffee and toddy shops as well as various businesses run by Indian Muslim and Chinese proprietors who operated in the area. The asymmetrical enforcement of segregation in this context served to highlight the power differential that existed between caste Hindus and untouchables. Lakshmi Naidu recalled her grandmother describing visits to the Syed Alwi Road Junction in the Jalan Besar area to buy joss sticks. Once there, she would hold out her hands to keep untouchables away at a distance and once home she would ‘cleanse’ herself by bathing and changing her clothes.72

Coffee Shops, Caste and Others

Coffee shops along Jalan Besar offer another interesting example of caste-based segregation and prejudice against untouchables, but are particularly interesting because the discrimination occurred at the hands of members of other racial communities. Chinese owners were instructed by higher caste Hindus that if they wished to continue receiving their patronage, they had to bar untouchables from sitting within the premises of these shops; instead they should stand outside the shops drinking their tea. They were also served drinks in empty condensed milk cans instead of glasses like the other patrons. Similar segregation was widespread in chai stalls throughout India, but its expansion to Chinese-owned businesses is interesting for !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 69 Edgar Thurston, Castes and Tribes, 87; Mani, “Changing Caste-Structure,” 42. 70 M. Subramaniam, interview by author, January 24, 2012. Other areas in which low caste workers were housed in labour lines included Katong, Jalan Kayu and Ko Chuan. Nadarajan Ratha Krisnan, Acc. No. 000883, Reel/Disc: 5/5, Oral History Centre, NAS. 71 Lakshmi Naidu, Acc. No. 000110, Reel/Disc: 5, Oral History Centre, NAS. 72 Ibid.

! 132! many reasons. Firstly it demonstrates the cultural orientation of Tamil migrants in the area. Caste Hindu migrants in the area did not mind purchasing drinks from the Chinese, who were widely stereotyped as being consumers of pork by Hindus, but were keen to maintain ritual distancing from untouchables.73 For Tamil Hindus, pork consumption was widely regarded as a symbol of ritual impurity and was seen as a mark of low caste status, often sufficient to justify ostracisation.74 One interviewee, Mrs. Jawharilal recalled that her mother was once on friendly terms with the other Indian women who frequented a market in Pasir Panjang in the south west of Singapore.75 They avoided her mother after they spotted her buying pork one day, and began to suggest that she was a Pariah. The exclusion of Chinese coffee shop owners from caste-based value judgments mirrors the fact that to a large extent non-Indians and non-Tamils were not dynamically inserted into caste paradigms but were left outside, signaling a cultural inwardness on the part of caste Hindus. The exclusion of the Chinese from caste-based judgments about their diet and lifestyles suggests that for many, the ritual notion of purity and pollution was not as important as a motivating reason for caste prejudice, as much as more pragmatic concerns about preserving the status quo for one’s caste group in India.

Caste identity was very much based on the external geographies of villages and regions in India and their associated social economies that were comprised of specific religious communities, castes and groups. Individuals who could not easily be identified with any of these categories, or at the very least were seen as occupying a space completely outside a caste-based ontological view of the world by virtue of not being Indian, simply occupied an external and temporary field of reference. This was partly because relations with these individuals were not seen to have a bearing on social relations back in India.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 73 I have been made aware of this in at least two interviews. The association of the Chinese community in Singapore with pork consumption was also heavily featured in colonial writing throughout the 19th century, and was reflected in some colonial policies, such as the inclusion of pork rations for Chinese prisoners. A government surveyor has also referred to the Chinese as “pork-loving”. Thomson, Glimpses, 16. 74 Similar associations were made with Indians who consumed canned corned beef and canned sardines. With the sardines, the idea of impurity and pollution was derived from the fact that the preserved sardines were considered to have been dead for a long time. 75 Mrs. D. Jawharilal, interview by author, January 8, 2012.

! 133! This pattern of behaviour is also suggestive of a pragmatic appraisal; it was simply impossible to treat the socio-economically and numerically dominant Chinese community the same way it was to treat the relatively small and socio-economically vulnerable Tamil Adi Dravida community. This ‘compartmentalisation’ of caste, to borrow a phrase from A. Mani, can be seen as a manifestation of an increasingly complex urban subjectivity, brought on by immigration and the experience of being a minority within an extremely multi-ethnic environment. At the same time, the external orientation of cultural practice once again points to the fact that many Tamil immigrants considered their time in Singapore temporary and were unwilling to make dynamic re-adjustments to their notions of selfhood based on their new environment overseas. Alejandro Portes has noted that circular migratory flows of short duration in general have a tendency to produce less social changes than permanent displacements, and his observations appear to apply in this particular instance as well.76

Caste protocols exercised in the coffee shops of Jalan Besar also demonstrate the attempt by migrants to get non-Tamils to practice discrimination against untouchables. They were presumably able to do so because being situated within an Indian enclave, these migrants comprised most of the clientele at these coffee shops. It is interesting to note the subtle codes of practice that accompanied discrimination against untouchables at these locations. I asked one interviewee how Adi Dravidas were recognised at these coffee shops, and he suggested that they were socialised into behaving in certain ways to make their caste identity more apparent to stall owners.77 They would apparently stand outside the confines of the shop, often beneath a hanging string of empty condensed milk cans that were a common form of ornamentation, with a certain posture and comportment. Chinese stall owners learned to identify Adi Dravidas based on a series of assumptions and stereotypes. An individual carrying a broomstick was immediately identified as a worker with the Public Cleansing Unit and a Pariah. Other more subtle physical stereotypes included a disheveled appearance, facial hair and very dark skin. Such assumptions naturally led to instances when caste Hindus were wrongly identified as untouchables, and so the practice of discriminating against untouchable at these shops must have been very

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 76 Alejandro Portes, “Migration and Social Change: Some Conceptual Reflections” (keynote address, Theorizing Key Migration Debates Conference, Oxford University, July 1, 2008), 15. 77 V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 24, 2011.

! 134! much reliant on the playing out of social scripts by untouchable patrons who sought various ways to embody their caste through their behaviour, with the awareness that a failure to do so meant the risk of physical violence at the hands of other patrons.78

In her oral history interview, Lakshmi Naidu described how difficult it became to identify untouchables, because they could use jewelry to “cover” their identity, presumably because it was no longer easy to associate them with poverty and a certain appearance. She described how “untouchable people” were in this manner “cheating” “,” by allegedly making what she felt was their essential identities difficult to detect. Considerable ambiguity and slippage is common when oral history sources utilise the terms “Indians” and “Tamils”, but a common factor seems to be the fact that individuals who discriminated against untouchables frequently placed them outside conceptual ethnic categories that they considered themselves to belong to. Besides, the continued Othering of former-untouchables, her statement reveals the assumption that manifesting an untouchable identity in easily identifiable ways by embodying certain stereotypes was somehow associated with truthfulness and honesty. Conversely, the implication was that to do otherwise, to imagine oneself outside of caste paradigms or to simply ‘disguise’ one’s untouchable status, would constitute an act of dishonesty. It is easy to imagine that similar notions of duty or honesty were part of the moral economy of caste practice that governed daily encounters that occurred in the coffee shops of Jalan Besar.

Caste and Occupation ! Changing labour relationships provided a challenge to traditional inter-caste relationships and hierarchies by de-linking socio-cultural reciprocities and economic exchange and by divesting labour of its religious and cultural associations. In Singapore, most Tamil menial labourers came under the employment and supervision of the Straits Settlements Government. The exchange of labour for fixed wages that originated from the government, a distant and somewhat abstract source, was a marked change from the largely non-monetary exchanges and inter-personal !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 78 V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 24 and 31, 2011; Lakshmi Naidu, Acc. No. 000110, Reel/Disc: 5, Oral History Centre, NAS.

! 135! relationships of dominance and subordination that marked the social economy of many rural villages in South India. This transformation in labour relations provided a challenge to caste identity by empowering former untouchables and by removing many of the debasing social duties and obligations that accompanied economic exchange in rural villages. As discussed in the last chapter, the effects of wage labour were in some cases limited by structural factors such as the Kangany system. Caste Hindus also actively sought to circumvent the challenges to caste that such arrangements entailed by introducing caste-based vocational specification within the municipal branches of the government that employed Tamil labourers. Like the example of Chinese coffee shop owners, this represents another instance when Tamil immigrants brought pressure to bear on members of other communities to facilitate prejudice against untouchables.

As mentioned in previous chapters, labouring vocations within various government departments were allocated by caste, and as a result labour lines also became segregated by caste. For example Indian road sweepers and refuse collectors were almost entirely from the Pariah caste and Pallars predominated in night soil collection.79

(IMAGE REMOVED)

Figure 4. Public Cleansing Division employee in the Jalan Besar area in 1964.80

(IMAGE REMOVED)

Figure 5. A Public Cleansing Division employee cleaning a drain in Lorong Lalat in 1964.81

These were very unpleasant vocations. Workers often had to work and live in unhygienic conditions and were often poorly tooled with changkols, brooms and

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 79 V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 24, 2011. 80 “Scene of a Street Cleaner Clearing Away Refuse at Lorong Lalat (Lane of Flies),” Media Image no: 19980000351-0078, NAS. 81 “Scene of street cleaners ar work at Lorong Lalat (Lane of Flies)”, Media image no: 19980000351- 0075, NAS.

! 136! hand-drawn carts, often also using their bare hands to clear rubbish. Lorong Lalat, a Malay name that translates to “lane of flies” was the core of the Adi Dravida zone in Jalan Besar and even in the 1970s the area was still referred to as “the street of Pariahs” by higher caste Hindus.82

Indian labourers made up the majority of the 100,000 residents in the surrounding Rochore district in the 1950s, and the area had a terrible reputation.83 Situated next to a government-run abattoir, Lorong Lalat was named after the amount of flies attracted to the blood and animal waste that passed in open drains along Jalan Besar.84 Jalan Besar was also where a major garbage incinerator was located and the area had a reputation for being unpleasant, unhygienic and dangerous.85 Murders, suicides and crime occurred very frequently in the city council quarters located in Lorong Lalat and its surrounds at a noticeably higher rate than in most other parts of Singapore. The area was a well-known red-light district, criticised for poor sanitation and crime associated with the proliferation of illegal gambling rackets.86 The local press even termed Jalan Besar “the black hole of Singapore,” with one reporter during the 1950s describing the surrounding Rochore area as “a labrinth of neglect” and a “disgrace to Singapore.”87 The nearby Rochore River also had a long-standing reputation for not only being, in the words of one writer, “filthy” and “disgusting”, but for also frequently containing dead bodies.88 The labour lines in Lorong Lalat were poorly policed and were frequently the scene of murders resulting from altercations between labourers. A newspaper report from 1954 described “the labour lines, around Lorong Lalat, between Serangoon Road and Jalan Besar Road, [where] hooligans terrorise the residents. They haunt coffee shops and side lanes, picking on passers-by.” 89 The general official neglect of the district reflects the low priority given to addressing the concerns of the Indian labouring majority living there.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 82 Mani, “Changing Caste-Structure,” 19. 83 “Where They Live in Fear,” Straits Times, June 21, 1954, 5. 84 Today the Jalan Berseh Hawker Centre stands on the land where the abattoir was previously situated. “Lalat,” Straits Times, 4 November 1920, 8. 85 “When Jalan Besar Was a Swamp,” Straits Times, 8. 86 “Where They Live in Fear,” Straits Times, 5. 87 Ibid. 88 “Indian Dead in Rochore Canal,” Straits Times, January 10, 1948, 7; “A Filthy Canal,” Straits Times, September 9, 1949, 6; “Body Found,” Straits Times, April 13, 1951, 4; “Body in Canal,” Straits Times, July 8, 1954, 5; “Body Found in Rochore River,” Straits Times, February 16, 1957, 4; “Child’s Corpse,” Straits Times, May 12, 1957, 7; “Sikh’s Body in Canal,” Straits Times, June 14, 1957, 9. 89 “When Jalan Besar Was a Swamp,” Straits Times, 8.

! 137!

The territorial segregation of untouchables within Jalan Besar and their exclusion from the caste Hindu zone of Serangoon Road can also be seen as an attempt to exclude untouchables from access to better living conditions and environments. Even though the conditions of the Jalan Besar area were primarily a result of land use policies governing the area, they powerfully reinforced essentialising caste narratives about the debasement of the untouchable workers who were its residents. Some sources also claim that government lines contained two separate water sources for touchable and untouchable workers.

During the pre-war period, the enforcement of a caste-based status quo not only served to align immigrants with cultural practices in India, but also provided occupational benefits for castes who monopolized for their caste and kin the better paying and more desirable municipal jobs, or at least kept them out of the reach of untouchable labourers. This allowed caste distinctions to become a function of class distinctions as well.

The policy of dividing vocations based on caste was partially the result of socialization processes. Newly arrived untouchable workers would be coerced by established immigrants to only apply for the lowest paying, most difficult or most physically unpleasant vocations. Despite the fact that numerous sources confirm the widespread nature of the caste-based allocation of labour vocations, there is no mention of it in the official records of the municipal or public works departments in Singapore, suggesting that it occurred as a reaction to demands on the ground from labourers, but never became official policy. British authorities in these departments saw no reason to interfere with the arrangements amongst Tamil immigrants and acquiesced to these policies.90 As stated, it was often the untouchable workers themselves who asked for these specific vocations, under pressure from other Hindu workers and because these vocations were where their caste and kinsmen were concentrated. In an oral interview, Kannusamy s/o Pakirisamy, an immigrant to

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 90 Requests were made to the colonial authorities in Singapore to end the caste-based segregation along labour lines in both government quarters and on plantations. These requests were not granted, probably owing to the fact that the government continued to view most daily-rated labourers as being in favour of maintaining segregation. “Disorderly Scenes at Conference,” The Singapore Free Press Mercantile Advisor, 3.

! 138! Singapore revealed another reason that workers from India were afraid to violate occupational caste rules in Singapore. He says that with the amount of circular travel between Singapore and India, workers were afraid that their village headmen in India would come to find out about their contravention of caste rules and subsequently suspend protection and patronage, leaving them and their families vulnerable to abuse from gangs and other villagers.91

Under occupational norms imposed by higher caste Hindus, untouchables were not allowed to be fumigators, cable-layers or participate in work associated with electricity or the supply of water. Caste Hindus allegedly informed the municipal authorities that letting untouchable labourers work on piping or in water tanks would be ritually contaminated the supply for all Hindus, thus exploiting a belief held by many British officials about the pivotal importance of caste segregation and caste rules to the maintenance of Hindu identity.

British beliefs about the centrality of purity and proximity rules to caste Hindu identity were partially informed by stories about caste that featured in the English language press in Singapore. Such stories became increasingly common during the 1930s. Religious rules governing contact with untouchables were prominently featured in the English language newspapers following the coverage of Gandhi’s movement to uplift the ‘Harijans’ or untouchables in India. One such article, published in 1933, regarded a meeting of the Anti-Untouchable Society in Bengal. After caste Hindu members of the society made speeches in support of Gandhi’s call, an untouchable who was present suggested that the speakers should set a practical example by drinking water served by untouchables, a request that they refused.92 Articles like these not only informed outside observers about caste practices related to issues like water sharing, but also no doubt shaped the perception that because caste rules were so integral to caste identity itself, challenges posed to the practice of caste rules would challenge the basis of that identity.93 Such assumptions were common

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 91 Kannusamy s/o Pakirisamy, Acc. No. 000081, Reel/Disk: 28, Oral History Centre, NAS. 92 “Caste Hindus Tested: Pious Precepts Without an Example,” The Straits Times, May 24, 1933, 14. 93 English speaking Indians were sensitive to the ways that caste prejudice was portrayed as backward, irrational and cruel in the English language papers in Singapore. This reflects how representations of caste in the multi-ethnic English language sphere influenced wider perceptions of Indians and caste practice. In 1913, an angry individual wrote a letter of complaint to the Straits Times regarding a story about caste in India. The story had suggested that caste Hindu women in India would rather see their

! 139! amongst many British officials in Malaya. For instance, a labour department report from 1936 argued that a piped water supply would spell “death to caste” because it ensured a common water source for all Tamil labourers.”94 The reasoning was that caste Hindus would consider themselves ritually polluted by sharing a water source with untouchables, they would find no incentive to continue perpetuating a system based on ritual purity and pollution.

However, although plantation owners and some government departments acquiesced to certain caste customs, in many instances they were simply ignored. Responses to caste varied considerably across different government departments. Before the Second World War, labour lines built to house City Council and Municipal workers were separated according to caste, as were the various occupations within these departments. In other areas of public life however, caste rules were not respected, and government officials in Singapore had wider latitude to ignore them. This they often did, although doing so had more to do with practical concerns, such as the maintenance of equal administration of justice and the execution of public services across an ethnically diverse population, rather than a desire to reform the social practices of a particular ethnic community. A letter to the editor of the Straits Times published in 1920 made reference to a string of prior letters published in the paper that drew the attention of managers and medical officers “to the importance of considering caste prejudice.” 95 The writer went on to complain that since the publishing of the letters, not much had changed and that he had heard of an Indian medical officer insisting that higher caste Tamils should take medicine from lower caste dressers. The vexed correspondent concluded his letter, asking: “Is this the right way of making Tamil coolies content?” 96

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! own children drown rather than suffer them to be saved by an untouchable. The letter-writer argued that this was a ridiculous proposition. He railed against articles in English periodicals that featured “superficial observations” of cultural practices, written by these publications in a sensationalistic manner in order “to suit the taste of their readers.” The editor defended the article claiming that it was an accurate reflection of caste sentiment in India rather than Malaya, and that “Indians when they leave India leave a good deal of their caste exclusiveness behind them.” “Untouchables,” Straits Times, April 9, 1913, 10. 94 Labour Department of Malaya: Annual Departmental Report for 1936, 542, quoted in Heidemann, Kanganies, 76. 95 “Malaya and Labour,” Straits Times, January 23, 1920, 10. 96 Ibid.

! 140! In another highly publicized case in 1931, a Chettiar and former moneylender, Vengadasalem Chetty, was sentenced to three months rigorous imprisonment for having sworn a false affidavit in a bankruptcy proceeding. In his appeal, his lawyer argued that his sentence was unduly harsh, because not only would it have resulted in the loss of his caste, but also that of his brother and nephew as well as his sisters who would not be allowed to marry within their caste. The Chief Justice of the Straits Settlements dismissed the appeal arguing that “every crime had its consequences beyond individual punishment.”97 In doing so, Justice Sproule continued acting in accordance to prior legal precedent established by similar legal cases in Malaya in which any special consideration of caste sentiment was ruled out with regards to criminal sentencing.

In an earlier case in Kuala Lumpur, a 15-year-old boy was put on trial in 1923 for stabbing his mother to death after she went to live with a low caste man following the death of his father. The boy’s defence lawyer, Ragendra, attempted to explain the element of caste involved in the case to allow a sentence for culpable homicide not amounting to murder. Ragendra argued “it was hard in cases of that kind for the western mind to conceive of the grave provocation of the situation” since the Tamil labouring classes were “very particular about caste distinctions.”98 The presiding judge however refused to allow caste sentiment to be taken into consideration, sentencing the boy to death. The lack of regard for caste differences by certain public officials demonstrates that for Hindu immigrants, caste customs were often not simply carried over into an environment immediately favourable to caste hierarchies.

Establishing Caste Practice

The many social factors that militated against caste practice suggests that migrants had to employ creative agency to establish certain caste customs in spheres of daily life where they did not previously exist. It is not known exactly how these cultural practices were introduced and the manner in which they endured in various forms !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 97 “Chetty’s Appeal,” Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, July 20, 1931, 12. 98 “Boy Murders His Mother: Sentence of Death Passes at Kuala Lumpur,” Straits Times, December 1, 1923, 12.

! 141! between the late 19th century and the late 1940s, amidst the frequent comings and goings of a highly transient migrant population.99 By what means were new migrants socialised into reproducing caste practices and establishing a form of diasporic cultural continuity?

These invented practices could have been the result of conscious and concerted efforts by higher caste groups, as in the case of Hindu temples, where temple committees decided policies of entry or exclusion. In other instances they may have stemmed from more gradual, organic processes as untouchable Tamils and higher caste Tamil immigrants began moving into certain areas at the same time. One interviewee suggested to me that higher caste immigrants in the past would take new immigrants who belonged to their caste to the Jalan Besar area on slum tours to show them the areas where untouchables lived so that they could be avoided.100 Boundaries may have been maintained this way, through communication and socialization between older and newer immigrants over time.

Caste and Class ! Another factor that influenced the negotiation of caste identity was the fact that the many members of English-educated Indian elite in Malayan society did not engage in any concerted attempt to challenge caste prejudices and remained relatively uninvolved in shaping cultural attitudes with regards to this issue.101 One of the reasons why the English-educated elite were reluctant to acknowledge the presence of caste and discrimination in wider Indian society in Malaya because they were sensitive to the ways that caste was increasingly being portrayed as an irrational, primitive and cruel aspect of Indian culture in the English language papers in

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 99 According to Richard Leete, Indians in Malaya began displaying the characteristics of a settled population in 1957, with most of the Indians during that period being local born and there existing in a balanced sex ratio. Richard Leete, Malaysia’s Demographic Transition: Rapid Development, Culture and Politics (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1996), 8. 100 V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 24, 2011. 101 The Indian Association in Singapore, which attracted mostly English-educated members of the Indian elite into its ranks, held occasional talks and debates regarding the question of caste and whether or not caste should be abolished. These debates were open to members of the public. Beyond this, the association and its affiliated organisations did not at any time actively address the issue of caste prejudice in Singapore. “Untitled,” Straits Times, May 16, 1924, 8.

! 142! Singapore. This reflected an anxiety on the part of Indian elites about how representations of caste in the multi-ethnic English language sphere influenced wider perceptions of Indians as a whole. Although many of the stories were based on factual accounts of caste atrocities committed against low caste and untouchable communities, caste prejudice seen through the self-reflexive lens of a multi-ethnic discursive space became a constant indictment of the supposed backwardness of Indian culture.

As a result of this anxiety and unwillingness to acknowledge caste prejudice as a problem, caste was commonly characterised by Indian elites as something that was only a problem amongst uneducated working class Tamils. Untouchables and other low caste Hindus experienced the imposition of distance maintenance, discrimination and the threat of violence, primarily at the hands of other working class labourers of a higher caste. Resource competition from this group of immigrants who occupied similar socio-economic strata would have provided a further incentive for the active enforcement of caste-based distinctions. Untouchables had few avenues for regular interaction with educated, white-collar Indians and those among them who did harbour an aversion to social contact with untouchables could simply present this as an aspect of class-consciousness. Many amongst the Indian elite who were English- educated and who mingled in multi-racial social circles were keen to distance themselves from the appearance of harboring caste feelings. Caste was therefore discursively constructed as something antithetical to a modern rational outlook.102

A result of this was that many socially conscious Indian elites, such as those in the Indian Association who began looking into the welfare of Indian labourers in the 1920s, seldom mentioned the embarrassing issue of caste and approached social welfare almost entirely from the paradigms of class and labour.103 Needless to say, this meant that social reform initiatives led by English-educated Indians sidestepped most issues of caste and although they provided education and other forms of social

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 102 The construction of “modernity” in relation to Indian identity will be more fully explored in the next chapter. 103 The Indian Association’s public messages and stated social mission almost always focused on “Indian labourers”, even though the organisation opened a school for Adi Dravida children, showing that its members were aware of the prevalence of segregation and caste-based discrimination. Adi Dravida children were previously barred from entering schools that enrolled caste Hindu children. V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 24, 2011.

! 143! support, did little to prevent the daily caste discrimination that untouchables were subject to, beyond paying lip service in talks, speeches and debates to the need for labourers to transcend caste and for all Indians to come together in unity. This was criticised by individuals who saw a missed opportunity for the Indian elite to use their social position to change caste attitudes. A writer to the Straits Times in 1933 argued that “the leading Indians who desire furtherance of social reforms should devote their time and energy to casting off untouchability amongst the Hindus.” The writer suggested that the reason for this was latent caste prejudice. “Why blame coolies alone, who are uneducated and whose veins are injected with this nefarious custom,” he argued, when “there are educated high-caste Hindus who are very reluctant to bring about … reforms.”104

The Persistence of Caste Consciousness

Despite the increasing heterogeneity of attitudes with regards to untouchability and caste, the voices of those who sought to retain the status quo remained very influential. Untouchables continued to suffer daily indignities and overt forms of public discrimination until the start of the Second World War. Oral history interviews that attempt to ascertain motivations for maintaining caste reveal that these were slippery at best, often only underscoring the incoherence, inconsistency and inaccessibility of the driving factors that informed an individual’s beliefs and cultural practices. The motivation to maintain boundaries with untouchables was the result of a complex and dynamic relationship between religious conviction, a sense of obligation and responsibility to kinsmen linked by transnational networks, as well as the recognition that caste could be utilised to maximize group solidarity and communal advantage in a new overseas environment.

I would argue that the internalisation of religious concepts and beliefs such as purity and pollution, karma, dharma and reincarnation, while an important component of caste prejudice in Singapore, did not provide as strong an impetus for the perpetuation of caste prejudices as did concern for the reputation of family and kinsmen in India, a

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 104 “Caste Names,” Straits Times, 5.

! 144! need to safeguard the status quo from India as well as a desire for material benefits that arose from using caste to secure privileges from the government. This explanatory paradigm is consistent with observations about how caste identity evolved in Singapore, as well with the existing scholarly literature on caste in India.105 This is particularly so, given that the weakening of these factors contributed more significantly to the decline of caste, rather than the weakening of religious convictions, which remained strong during periods of reform and simply evolved to accommodate the erosion of a caste-based status quo. Recent sociological work by scholars Robert Deliège and Michael Moffat have demonstrated that a belief in the concept of karma is weak amongst the rural untouchables featured in their studies as well as, in the case of Moffat’s work, higher caste Tamil villagers as well.106 These studies demonstrate that views on the reasons for the existence of the caste system can vary substantially amongst Hindus and are not necessarily based on an acceptance of metaphysical concepts like karma and re-birth.

Hindu migrants in Singapore made many attempts to impose caste rules in Singapore. In many cases they were successful. However in cases where caste rules had to be relaxed due to structural necessities, the caste system as manifested by the Tamil Hindu community in Singapore remained flexible, adaptive and resilient because strong incentives remained to ensure its maintenance. Even though symbolic boundary lines shifted, continuously being breached and re-drawn, hierarchies survived intact for decades. The early orientation of Tamil migrants towards geographically limited transnational communities aided the development and perpetuation of caste prejudice against untouchables. From the 1920s however, this was challenged by the growth and spread of transnational movements and ideologies that widened and expanded identity narratives, introducing a diasporic consciousness amongst Tamils in Singapore. The next chapter will explore the impact of Dravidian and Indian nationalist ideology on immigrants and examine how evolving discourses

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 105 Sociological work by scholars like Robert Deliège and Michael Moffat have demonstrated that a belief in the concept of karma is weak amongst the rural untouchables featured in their studies, as well as, in the case of Moffat’s work, higher caste Tamil villagers. Robert Deliège, “Replication and Consensus: Untouchability, Caste and Ideology in India,” Man, New Series 27, no.1 (March 1992): 159; Michael Moffatt, An Untouchable Community in South India: Structure and Consensus (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 268, 294, 296. 106 Ibid.

! 145! on Tamil and Indian identity introduced discursive challenges to caste prejudice against untouchables in Singapore.

! 146! Chapter Four

Identity Narratives and the Beginnings of Diasporic Consciousness

From the 1920s, the translocal orientations of Tamil migrants gave way to expanded notions of diasporic identity that had a profound impact on the ways that caste and untouchability were addressed within Singapore. I argue that this occurred primarily as a result of the spread of Indian Nationalist and Dravidian ideology into Singapore and of the emergence of social reform movements in Malaya that were influenced by these ideologies and whose members engaged with the Adi Dravida community in efforts to uplift the community. From this period onward the question of caste prejudice and the articulation of untouchable identities became closely imbricated in conflicting formulations of Indian and Tamil identity in Singapore and Malaya, becoming part of the wider history of the Indian community there. Untouchable identity formulation occurred in relation to intra-Indian community dynamics in Malaya but also evolved in response to the broader negotiation of transnational identities.

In the first half of this chapter I explore the ideologies and discourses of the Dravidian movement and Congress nationalists in India that influenced the nature of Singaporean organisations that advanced the interests of both movements overseas. I argue that different attitudes towards caste and untouchability arose within both movements, with Congress nationalists adopting a more conciliatory approach to caste prejudice as a result of their different political aims, and different discursive treatments of existing cultural traditions as well as differing conceptions of modernity. In the second half of the chapter I scrutinise the activities of the Indian Association and Tamil Reform Association and their efforts to promote a pan-Indian identity and a linguistically defined Tamil ethnic identity respectively.

I will also explore the role that both social movements played in the uplift of the Adi Dravida community, and will argue that the rhetoric of Dravidian ideology in Malaya offered a more representative, participatory and empowering strategy of social

! 147! upliftment. The relationships that were forged between the Adi Dravida Sangams and the Tamil reformers had a significant role to play in the decision by the Adi Dravida community to see themselves as “Tamils” during the postwar period.

Widening Identities and Changing Outlooks

In the early years of the 20th century, however, a shift occurred in the identity orientations of Tamil labour migrants in Singapore away from the translocal orientation discussed in the last chapter, towards one that encompassed the translocal, as well as different forms of a broader diasporic consciousness. This was a period when migrants began to conceive of their identities in broader terms in relation to socio-political developments in India, Malaya and other parts of the world. Migrants began to gain a politicised awareness of their memberships in larger imagined social, political and national communities, of the sort described by Benedict Anderson. With institutional buttressing from newly emerging associations, grassroots movements and an aggressive propaganda push from Indian newspapers in Singapore, Tamil migrants began to seriously consider and articulate new notions of selfhood and group identity in relation to colonialism, ‘modernising’ discourses, anti-colonial movements and, by the 1940s, the experience of war and occupation.1

The growth of a diasporic consciousness and the concomitant broadening of notions of identity away from immediate kin, village and caste groups greatly opened the space for imaginative modes of resistance against caste prejudice. Before this, immigrants had loose conceptions of their membership to broader social categories by virtue of their religious faith or country and region of origin. However, during the early twentieth century these alternative identities became more salient and diasporic consciousness began to have a much deeper impact on the self-perceptions of Tamil !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 The impact of Indian journalism, both in English and in Tamil was somewhat limited during the 1920s by widespread illiteracy amongst the labouring classes. In Singapore for instance, in 1921 Indian literacy stood at around 33 percent out of a total population of 27,612 Indians. By 1931, around the time that Tamil reformist journalism began to gain popularity, total Indian literacy amongst the Indians across the Straits Settlements had not significantly improved and stood around 37 percent. The reach of newspapers was increased by common reading practices such as the reading aloud of newspapers in communal settings as well as the fact that speakers at public speaking gatherings frequently spoke on topics raised by Indian newspapers. Figures taken from Rajeswary Ampalavanar, “Tamil Journalism and the Indian Community in Malaya, 1920-1941,” Journal of Tamil Studies 2, no. 2 (1970): 8.

! 148! immigrants. This is turn shaped the epistemological framework upon which the moral dimension of social interaction and inter-caste relations were calculated. This expanding worldview was made possible by the spread and growth of social movements, organisations and associations that were linked on both sides of the Indian Ocean by migration and the transnationalisation of ideologies during the early 20th century. These ideologies and their corresponding identity discourses also gained traction through the growth of theatrical performances, public events, meetings and speeches as well as visits from prominent Indian social reformers and politicians. Identity formulation became an important and conscious political activity.

The daily-lived experiences of Indians under colonial rule made many realise that there was a close link between knowledge production and social capital. By the mid 19th century for instance many subaltern groups were keenly aware that the struggle for power or social equity was closely linked to the acquisition of various means of symbolic production to assert and gain external recognition for constructed identities.2 The instrumental importance of propagating new identity narratives for furthering social agendas was fully appreciated by the leaders of Indian social movements that emerged in Malaya, who variously sought the educational improvement of the Indian labouring community, the reform of traditional practices or the solicitation of support for Indian independence and statehood.

These narratives also represented an attempt by social activists to project consciously constructed modernities onto Indian migrant subjectivities. They often incorporated paradigms of development, references to linear and universal progressive stages, and deployed varying notions of “civilisation.”3 These narratives also varied with regard to their ideological attitudes towards existing traditional and cultural practices. They differed substantially in the ways they rationalised the existence of caste. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 2 Elsewhere I have studied the example of the Shanars of Tinnevelly, a low caste Tamil group who within one generation of receiving education in the mid nineteenth century launched an attack on pre- existing missionary classifications that depicted the Shanars as a low caste. I have used this example to highlight the attempt by Indian groups to influence discourse as a means of gaining social status. John Solomon, “Constructing the Dravidian: Missionary Representations of “Dravidian” Tamils and Tamil Culture in the Nineteenth Century” (honours thesis, University of New South Wales, 2009), 31-36. 3 References to stages of “civilisation” were commonly featured in critiques on caste that began to appear in Malayan newspapers after the end of the 19th century. One Indian writer in 1912 lamented that the caste system had forced India “to pursue a downward course” while other countries that “condemned and disregarded” the system were “moving onward to progress and civilisation.” “Indian Caste,” The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, September 7, 1912, 6.

! 149!

The growth of a diasporic consciousness amongst Indian migrants in Malaya in the twentieth century also coincided with a greater awareness of international events and global developments. Migrants were beginning to situate their identities relationally by adopting a much broader, comparative outlook. In Singapore, Indian newspapers paid close attention to the emergence of various ethno-linguistic nationalisms across the globe. Japan’s rapid modernisation and ascension on the world stage which was noted by a range of individuals of various ideological persuasions in India at various times, including Rabindranath Tagore, Nehru, Gandhi, E. V. R. Periyar and Ayothee Thass Pandithar, was also featured in Indian newspapers in Malaya.4 Later, migrants were also brought into an awareness of class categories through Marxist ideology, which for a few entailed the internalisation of a truly transnational consciousness. In Malaya this translated into cooperation between members of various races and a rejection, to an extent, of racial, ethnic, religious and caste distinctions.5

The widening of the discursive spectrum upon which migrant identities were based was a consequence of increased global connections, not just amongst societal elites, but also a result of the growth of organisational links and alliances amongst the territorially separated working and middle classes. It was further aided by the growth and spread of newspapers and publications and the increasing educational levels of reformist leaders, who often acted as cultural intermediaries to a wider world. For instance, through speeches and newspapers articles, Periyar in India and G. Sarangapany in Singapore made frequent references to political developments across the globe, and made comparisons with the Tamil people and other ethnic groups and nations across the globe.6

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 4 Pankaj Mishra, From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia (London: Allen Lane, 2012), 1-2. Mishra notes the widespread psychological reverberations in the non- Western world that accompanied the Japanese naval defeat of Russia in 1905. For example, during this period newborns in Indian villages were named after Japanese admirals. Ibid; “Russia and Japan,” Tamil Murasu, May 21, 1936, 3; “Japan’s Pariahs,” in Ayothidasa Sinthanaigal, ed. G. Aloysius (Palayamkottai: Folklore Resources and Research Centre, St. Xavier’s College, 1999), 45. 5 Mani writes that during the postwar period, ethnic blocs in Singapore were broken down by working class alliances between the races. Mani, “Indians in Singapore Society,” 789. 6 For example, “The Situation of Japan’s Women: Voting Rights, Birth Control,” Tamil Murasu, May 16, 1936, 6; “Our Nation’s Character and the Character of other Nations,” Tamil Murasu, November 5, 1940, 6. Translated from Tamil by the author.

! 150! By drawing attention to movements and events about Indians in India and in other parts of the world, Malayan newspapers in particular widened the extent of the Indian public sphere. Private letters were published from India regarding events in Malaya and vice versa, creating a transnational community of readers and contributors and a sense of shared concerns and interests. The print medium’s ability to collapse distances and create a sense of belonging and ideological purpose was utilized by social reformed in the attempt to mobilise public support and create imagined communities based on different sets of values, outlooks and imagined geographies of belonging. All these factors contributed to the increasing complexity of Indian social life in Malaya and created cultural spheres in which untouchables could participate in varying degrees, where previously exclusion from public life strengthened the narrower communal orientations of migrants. A final feature of the growth of Indian social movements in Malaya was the increasing comparisons that Indian leaders made between the Indian community and other groups like the Chinese, often lamenting that the Indians were falling behind and failing, unlike the Chinese, to carve “a respectable place for themselves in Malaya.”7

All these factors widened the migrant experience of the imagined world, changing their cultural orientations and shifting and de-centering previous nodes of identity. With that exposure came a corresponding search for ‘universal’ principles with which to explain and challenge social inequalities or to chart the basis of a community’s future development, one that entailed a departure from an exclusively sub- continental frame of reference. A letter written to the editor of the Adi Murasu, a bi-monthly newspaper published in Singapore for the untouchable community of Malaya during the 1930s, is illustrative of the changing worldviews of the time and of the comparative and self-reflexive nature of social critique.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 7 “New Premises of Butterworth United Indian Association Opened: No Need to Say “United”-Mr. C.S Venkatachar’s Advice,” The Indian, January 23, 1941, 6. C. S Venkatachar, a visiting member of the Indian Civil Service, mentioned the widespread comparisons that were being made with the Chinese and advised the community against it, arguing that it created “a wrong sense of unnecessary inferiority complex.” An article in the Dravida Kesari, a monthly Tamil newspaper published in Singapore, also featured a lengthy comparison between the Chinese community in Malaya and the Indian community, praising the Chinese for their frugality, social unity, business acumen and sophisticated level of organisation. The same issue also contrasted the unity of the Chinese and Japanese communities with the ethnic disunity and rivalry plaguing the Indian community. “The Nation and it’s Mother Tongue,” Dravida Kesari: A High Class Tamil Monthly, (April-May 1937), 10; “Indians,” Dravida Kesari: A High Class Tamil Monthly, (April-May, 1937), 22. Translated from Tamil by author.

! 151! Dear Sir there are so many new ideas and philosophies in the world today but why is our Indian society in such a lowly state. There are many reasons. But the important reason is the existence of caste differences and one man bringing indignity to another. If one community oppresses another through caste differences and economic advantage, how can it be considered civilized by others. People in today’s world consider practices from the 17th and 18th century such as slavery to be unacceptable; but today in our country, in every day practice, caste differences are being practiced. These practices are worse than those of the 17th and 18th in the Western world. If the caste system is not abolished amongst Indians, our country will never be free. Will the Adi Dravida Sangam work to bring an end to the situation and help the marginalized people to come to the fore?8

Indian Nationalism and the Dravidian Movement in Malaya

By the twentieth century, although translocal networks continued to inform migrant identities, maintaining their structural importance as migrants’ primary sources of material support, they also began appropriating multiple identities in increasingly complex layers of reference. A. Mani highlights that the two social movements that had the largest impact on Indian identity in Singapore in the first half of the twentieth century were the Dravidian Movement and the Indian Independence Movement.9 Indian nationalism first gained wider popularity in Malaya in the 1920s. This occurred initially amongst English-educated Indian elites in Singapore, who later attempted to spread Indian nationalist ideology and a pan-Indian identity amongst labouring Tamil migrants.

The second major influence arrived roughly a decade later in the early 1930s with the beginning of the Tamil reform movement in Singapore which was a direct consequence of a visit by E.V. Ramasamy to Singapore in December 1929, and the dissemination of Dravidian ideology via India-born followers of Ramasamy who were !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 8 Adi Murasu, April 15, 1939, 1; translated from Tamil by author. Unfortunately during the course of my research I have only been able to locate one surviving issue of the Adi Murasu, in the British Library. It is difficult to determine how long the paper ran for, although this issue lists the names of its editorial staff and details its close association with a Singapore-based Adi Dravida Sangam, formed in 1929, which had over 500 members. Ibid., 3. 9 Mani, “Indians in Singapore Society,” 795.

! 152! based in Singapore. During his visit, Periyar suggested to his followers that they form branches of a “Dravidian Self Respect Organisation” in Singapore and elsewhere in Malaya.10 One of the main focuses of Periyar’s speeches in Malaya was of the pressing need for Tamils to do away with the caste system. He also spoke of the Tamils as a ‘nation,’ making critical comparisons between the Tamils and other ‘nations.’11

In addition to the pan-Indian and Tamil ethnic identities that were promoted by Indian nationalists and Dravidian reformers, a third identity narrative emerged amongst untouchable groups. This was framed around the notion of a pan-untouchable struggle and pan-untouchable solidarity. However, for the most part of Malaya’s pre-war history, this never manifested in a well-organised popular social movement. There were insufficient active organisational links between untouchable social movements in India and untouchable groups in Singapore. This was in part due to the fact that pan-untouchable movements, such as B. R. Ambedkar’s and Jyotirao Phule’s Maharashtra-based movements, were primarily based in Northern India and failed to transcend their regional character.12 They did not have an organisational presence in the Madras Presidency, nor any substantial links with Tamil untouchable groups. Therefore they did not actually participate in agitations for the improvement of Tamil untouchable social conditions, although their activities and the spread of their philosophy did influence emerging untouchable discourse across the subcontinent. Although untouchable emerged across Malaya and were collectively organised under an All-Malaya Adi Dravida Sangam, they were dependent on the patronage of non-untouchable Indians, because the demographics of migration meant that there simply were not enough untouchable leaders with the requisite social status, education or financial ability to effectively lead a specifically untouchable movement.

For untouchable Tamils, pan-untouchable solidarity and its organisational manifestations in India were not as salient as the Tamil Reform Movement, linked to E.V.R Periyar’s Self Respect Movement in Madras. The Self Respect Movement had !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 10 Mohd Elias, Thamizhavel Sarangapany (: Arivusudar Pathipackam, 1997), 40, 166. 11 “Burdens of Caste: Advancements of Indians Retarded,” Straits Times, January 3, 1930, 19. 12 Neera Burra has argued that Ambedkar’s influence within Maharashtra itself was primarily limited to members of his Mahar caste group and he did not receive widespread support from other untouchables in the state. Neera Burra, “Was Ambedkar Just a Leader of the Mahars?,” Economic and Political Weekly 21, no. 10/11 (March 1986): 429-31.

! 153! a radical agenda to unravel the caste system and champion the rights of Adi Dravidas in the Madras Presidency, becoming increasingly influential in the social and political life of the region. During the 1930s, Adi Dravida groups in South India and prominent Adi Dravida leaders were closely aligned with the Self Respect Movement and therefore there was no significant transnational push for the assertion of a distinct untouchable struggle for rights and recognition during this period. 13 The only exception occurred with the formation and brief existence of the Malayan Indian Scheduled Caste Federation in Malaya (MISCF) in 1946, an organisation that supported a pan-untouchable notion of identity.14

Reformist Hindu movements from India that set up branches in Singapore earlier were also guided by philosophies that challenged caste hierarchies and caste-based prejudice. The began in Singapore 1915, and the had set up a presence before the turn of the century. These movements were created with the intention of rationalising and reforming Hinduism as a reaction to Christian proselytization and Christian missionary criticism of aspects of Hinduism, such as idolatry and caste prejudice.15 These reformist Hindu movements did not recognise untouchability, opposed caste prejudice and opened their doors to members of all castes.16 However these organisations did not own newspapers, organise large-scale social events or actively propagate their doctrines in the public sphere in Singapore and were generally far less active than their counterparts in India. Besides offering food, lodging and social support for orphans and the needy, or offering their premises for talks and meetings held by other Indian reformist groups, they did not have a very significant social presence in Singapore and had a limited ideological influence on Indian labourers.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 13 Krishnamurthy Alamelu Geetha notes that Adi Dravida leaders in India urged Adi Dravidas to join the Self Respect Movement, and that subsequently Adi Dravidas became an important part of it. Krishnamurthy Alamelu Geetha, “From Panchamars to Dalit: The Evolution of Tamil Dalit Writing,” Prose Studies 33, no.2 (November 2011): 122-4. 14 I discuss the M.I.S.C.F and its failure to retain relevance or support in the next chapter. 15 Sudipta Kaviraj argues that by combatively engaging with in doctrinal debates, Hindu reformers made a fundamental concession to rationalism, which forced doctrinal justifications to change their character. Caste became seen as “morally repugnant and doctrinally dispensable.” Sudipta Kaviraj, “Modernity and Politics in India,” Daedalus 129, no. 1, Multiple Modernities (Winter 2000): 146. 16 For this reason, the Arya Samajists enjoyed a friendly relationship with Dravidian reformers in Singapore, such as the founder of the Tamil Reform Association, G. Sarangapany. An article in his Tamil newspaper, Munnetram, described the Arya Samajists as allies. Munnetram, February 5, 1931, 6.

! 154! As a consequence of this, the notion of a separate and distinct pan-untouchable caste struggle existed as an idea that was largely woven into the relationships that untouchable Tamils shared with the proponents of both Indian nationalism and Dravidian nationalism in particular. Untouchable identity in Singapore therefore was, for a significant period, negotiated alongside the mediation of various “Indian” and “Tamil” identities.

Ideology and Caste in India ! Dravidian and Indian nationalists in India differed greatly in their approaches to the problem of caste, which reflected the different approaches they took to the negotiation of cultural identity and modernity more generally. Whilst the Indian National Congress, effectively monopolised by Gandhi until the mid-1930s, offered a particular analysis of the caste system as a social problem, the Self-Respect phase of the Dravidian movement that was ushered in by E. V. Ramasamy was characterised by a dogmatic rejection of the entire caste system, which for many of his followers was accompanied by a rejection of wider Hindu tradition more generally. 17 This difference was to a large degree shaped by different attitudes towards British colonialism, with Dravidian nationalism developing a much more conciliatory view of British rule. This is turn had an impact on the ways that proponents of both movements constructed identities in response to the tension between existing cultural traditions and the rationalism and scientific outlook associated with “European modernity.”

One particular feature of Dravidian ideology was the application of scientific rationalism and political realism to understandings of social justice and caste oppression.18 One of the legacies of colonialism and British rule in India and in

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 17 Harold Coward, ‘Gandhi, Ambedkar and Untouchability,’ in Indian Critiques of Gandhi, ed. Harold Coward (New York: SUNY Press, 2003), 41-66. 18 The application of developmentalist paradigms against religion and other aspects of culture was a legacy of the colonial belief in the idea that human societies developed in universal stages that were separated in tiers by varying combinations of progressive and regressive attributes. Robert Young has written about how these ideas developed in relation to European colonialism in the 18th and 19th centuries. Robert Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London: Routledge, 1995), 35, 45-48.

! 155! overseas colonies was the increasing value of scientific paradigms to identity discourses emerging from a wide spectrum of Indian political and social groups. For subaltern Indians and non-Brahmin Tamils, scientific paradigms presented the basis for a parallel form of hegemonic discourse that could be appropriated and adapted to challenge the religious basis of the caste system that was situated within Brahmanical Hinduism.19

Dravidian reformers attempted to historicise the caste system as a sociological rather than religious phenomenon. It represented an attempt to frame caste as a function of competition between different social groups whose histories and discursive genealogies could be charted and studied as discrete historical occurrences. For Dravidian reformers, raising mass awareness to the sociological dimensions of caste practice and casting the religious basis upon which it was legitimated as backward and primitive was a crucial precursor to de-sacralising caste practice and encouraging identification with the more ‘modern’ concept of a national body based solely on language and ethnicity.

A letter written to the Dravidian-reformist linked Tamil Murasu in 1940 was typical of the views held by Tamil reformers and followers of Dravidian ideology about the relationship between ideas of nation and modernity to language and culture. The writer from Kuala Lumpur, who identified himself only as “a Dravidian,” spoke of the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 19 Gyan Prakash has written about the political role of science as a site of contested power between the colonised and colonisers in India. He argues that science as a discipline, method and world view was used by the British to reinforce a sense of racial and civilisational hierarchy, and to legitimate British power and control over India. This was achieved through the dissemination of scientific paradigms amongst Indians and the promotion of science as a universal ideal. However, this led to its adoption, adaptation and use by anti-colonial Indian elites as a tool to counter British discursive claims to civilisational superiority. Indian elites did this by using science to dispute British understandings of Indian history, as well as by locating science within pre-British Indian history and tradition and thereby constructing Indian modernities that were not beholden to the West. Gyan Prakash, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 3-8. An equally important corollary effect of this widespread adoption of science by nationalists and elites was that lower caste groups and minorities began to utilise science instrumentally, to shape identity discourses, explain social injustice and assert themselves within the social domain. R. Mahendran has written an essay describing Periyar’s personal contribution towards popularizing scientific paradigms amongst Tamils in Tamil Nadu through his newspapers, speeches and essays. He also mentions the dichotomy that Periyar made between science and tradition is his articulation of rationalist Tamil modernity. R. Mahendran, “Periyar on the Effects of Science,” Language in India 12, no. 4 (2012): 359-64. As I will discuss over the course of this chapter, the success of anti-caste discourses were perhaps initially limited by an over-emphasis on the relation of caste practice to existing religious structures and the fact that the Dravidian movement in Malaya was associated with radical atheism and seen as a threat to Hinduism.

! 156! rapid progress made by Japan, Turkey and Russia that he or she attributed to “a love of nation and language.”20 The Tamils, the writer implored, should adopt the same focus and reject “myths about caste, religion, hell or heaven.” 21 Dravidian reformers adopted a radical stance towards existing religious traditions. Not only was religious tradition seen pejoratively as a form of pre-modern superstition, but it had no place in Tamil identity which was instead defined by individual affiliation to Tamil as both a language and a wider linguistic cultural complex. Dravidian ideology therefore drew a sharp dichotomy between “rationalist” modernity and native tradition. It was also dependent on the politics of difference and otherness, and proponents sought to promote inclusion and cohesion via narrower boundaries of assimilation through the Tamil language and culture.

In contrast, the dominant intellectual currents within Gandhian Indian nationalist ideology rejected the principle of homogenisation through mass assimilation into a common culture and language for two main reasons. Firstly, unlike Periyar’s Dravidian ideology that focused on resistance to the perceived threat of cultural and political marginalisation within a larger Indian state in the future, Indian nationalism was constructed as an anti-imperial project.22 Leading Indian nationalists such as Gandhi and Nehru were keen to construct a modernity and a national identity that were uniquely Indian, and could consciously resist the accusation that they were mere derivations of European nationalism and therefore a structural replication of European modernity. Partha Chatterjee has eloquently described the importance that leading Indian nationalists ascribed to the task of constructing a sense of cultural authenticity and national identity within Indian nationalism that was not beholden to the West.23 Perhaps more importantly, basing a national identity on a common culture and language was an untenable solution for leaders who envisioned an undivided India containing within it the existing diversity of the Raj. Indian nationalist ideology therefore also contained an understanding of identity that was based on a sense of

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 20 “An Appeal to the Dravidians,” Tamil Murasu, October 23, 1940, 4; translated from Tamil by author. 21 Ibid. 22 Prior to the formation of Periyar’s Self Respect Movement in 1925, The , which campaigned on a non-Brahmin and Dravidian platform, aligned itself with the Congress despite ideological differences in the movement for Home Rule. 23 Partha Chatterjee, Empire and Nation: Selected Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 25-27.

! 157! belonging to a national body, but one that was highly heterogeneous and instead of being based on a specific language or ethnicity, was based on a lose conception of “Indianness”.24

Sudipta Kaviraj explains that although the emergence of a dominant religious culture appeared possible with the possibility of a separate , linguistic unity was far more difficult to envision, with the emergence of language-based regional patriotisms and the unstable and contested status of the still unstandardised Hindi language.25 He argues that Indian nationalist intellectuals, including Nehru, Tagore and Gandhi, rejected the attempt at replicating the homogenising tendencies of European nationalism and promoted a more complex model of unity in diversity. Suhas Palshikar argues that Gandhi’s notion of Indian identity encompassed an embracing of plurality within the universal goal of constructing a sense of national community.26 Given the extremely broad definition of “Indian identity” that was constructed as a result of the ascendency of the diversity principle, Indian nationalism itself was a very heterogeneous ideology that encompassed a spectrum of differences with regards to the articulation of cultural identities and modernity as well as the preservation of tradition. This form of Indian nationalism therefore differed conspicuously from Dravidian ideology, which represented the threat of regional secessionism and potential balkanisation against which dominant Indian nationalist identity narratives were consciously constructed.

The resultant accommodation of difference within Indian nationalism had a profound impact on the way that the caste system and inter-caste rivalries were addressed

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 24 While questioning the applicability of Benedict Anderson’s writings on nationalism to anti-colonial nationalisms, Partha Chatterjee argues that Indian nationalism had two distinctive dimensions. The first was “material” – applied to the domains of the economy, statecraft, science and technology, it entailed the adoption and replication of European institutions and practices. The second he argues was the “spiritual” – a site for the location and construction of the “essential marks” of a cultural identity structured in a conscious attempt to define the nation independently of Western influence. This ‘inner domain’ according to Chatterjee, was where non-European nationalism launched its most ‘powerful, creative and historically significant project’ which was to fashion a national culture that was simultaneously modern and non-Western. Chatterjee, Empire and Nation, 25-27. Gandhi himself emphasised a very similar distinction in his speeches. M.K. Gandhi, The Collected Works of (Electronic Book), (New Delhi: Publications Division of the Government of India, 1999) vol.33, 25 September 1925-10 February 1926, 21, at Gandhi Serve Foundation (website), accessed January 21, 2014, http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL033.PDF. 25 Ibid. 26 Suhas Palashikar, “Gandhi and Ambedkar,” Economic and Political Weekly 32, no.30 (July 1997): 1918.

! 158! within various manifestations of the independence movement. Due to the specific political conditions under which Indian nationalist ideology arose within the Congress movement, particularly its nature as a broad-based movement, it arguably accommodated a level of tolerance of caste-based hierarchical structures. This was due to the fact that the movement included within its broad support base groups and individuals who were wary of surrendering caste-based privileges or who resisted perceived threats to certain interpretations of Hindu orthodoxy. Highlighting the heterogeneous nature of the Congress, Richard Gordon writes that the “curious alliance of forces” which “were mixed so promiscuously” within the movement threatened its unity once agitation had subsided by 1920 when sectarian differences began “to re-assert themselves with a vengeance.”27 He also notes the influence of Hindu conservatives on the Congress during the 1920s as a result of significant membership overlaps across the Hindu Mahasabha, the Congress and Sanatana Dharma Movement that promoted Brahmanical orthodoxy.28 The staunch resistance of the Sanatanists to caste reforms was evident in their public differences with the Arya Samaj movement over caste reforms, their vigorous protestations against a government bill allowing untouchables entry into Hindu temples in 1934, as well as several other incidents.29

Despite this, influential Indian nationalist leaders in India attempted to deal with the question of untouchability because of the importance of incorporating the untouchable masses into the movement. Gandhi himself proclaimed that the abolition of untouchability was an essential precondition for or self-rule.30 In practice, Congress actions for the upliftment of untouchables were inconsistent, frequently suspended or subordinated to the political need for unity within the Congress movement. Gandhi was criticised by B. R. Ambedkar – who favoured of a more radical course – for his inherent paternalism and his unwillingness to depart from an !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 27 Richard Gordon, “The Hindu Mahasabha and the Indian National Congress, 1915 to 1926,” Modern Asian Studies 9, no.2 (1975): 145. 28 Ibid., 154-5. 29 Government of India Legislative Assembly Department, Paper No.4, Opinions on the Hindu Temple Entry Disabilities Removal Bill, Opinions Nos. 12-15, p. 340, IOR/L/PJ/7/686, BL. 30 Gandhi declared that India was “unfit to gain Swaraj” as long as “a fifth of the population of Hindustan” were kept in bondage. Prominent fellow Congress leaders like S. Srinivasa Aiyengar disagreed, however, and were keen to stress that the rhetorical emphasis on the abolition of untouchability as a precondition of Swaraj hurt the independence movement, and he disagreed that there was a direct connection between the two goals. Dennis Dalton, Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action (E-book: Columbia University Press, 2013), 55-56.

! 159! ineffective policy of gradual social persuasion. 31 Nonetheless, like Dravidian nationalist critiques of caste, Indian nationalist critiques of untouchability that portrayed the practice as being inherently unjust and backward introduced a critical and self-reflexive approach to caste persecution that influenced the identity construction of untouchable migrants. The popularisation of these critiques of caste, and their inclusion into the socio-political consciousness of everyday people, added additional weight and legitimacy to untouchable critiques of caste and to new identity narratives that situated themselves in the discourses of a broad-based popular mass movement.

The language and tropes of identity assertion utilised by Tamil untouchables and Tamil reformers within the Dravidian movement were in some cases heavily influenced by what was projected to be universalist, modern and normative forms of knowledge and epistemology but which were borrowed from European critiques of Hinduism and Indian culture. Dipesh Chakrabarty has termed the often hidden colonial contingencies upon which such forms of knowledge gained a universal status as “the unreasonable origins of reason.”32 For Periyar and many of his followers, the location of a universal/“Western” rationality within Tamil modernity presented a useful strategy for the assertion of a Tamil ethnic identity that was constructed in reaction to the perceived subjugation of Tamils at the hands of Brahmins and later, Northern Indians in general. A commonly deployed ethnographic justification for Brahmin superiority came from the supposed link between caste and race, and racial proximities between the European races and higher caste Hindus. Brahmin authors reproduced these assumptions adding to a formidable corpus of ethnographies, censuses, glossaries and histories.33

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 31 Ambedkar’s criticisms against Gandhi and the Congress are well documented in a book of his essays and letters on the subject. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables (Bombay: Thacker and Co., 1946). 32 Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Radical Histories and Question of Enlightenment Rationalism: Some Recent Critiques of Subaltern Studies,” Economic and Political Weekly 30, no.14 (April 1995): 751. 33 Other non-Tamil South Indians were reluctant to adopt the “Dravidian” identity promoted by Periyar because they were keen to claim a higher degree of “Aryan” blood and cultural affinity due to the fact that non-Tamil contained greater amounts of influence from than Tamil. Being speakers of the Dravidian language with the least amount of influence from Sanskrit, Tamils were not positioned to derive any benefit from making such claims. D. H. Rajanayagam, “Is there a Tamil Race?,” in The Concept of Race in South Asia, ed. Peter Robb (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), 137-8. Such beliefs continued to be held by many European academics up into the early 20th century, when prominent ethnologists linked the degree to which an individual was biologically “Aryan” with his caste-rank. For an example, refer to Herbert Risley, The Castes and Tribes of India,

! 160!

Mahadeo Moreshwar Kunte, a North Indian Brahmin scholar, in the 1880s described the British as “Western Aryas,” and described the Brahmins and the British as being of the same racial stock and sharing the same essentialised racial attributes.34 Several other notable southern Tamil Brahmin scholars in the early 20th century also utilised and promoted this racial understanding of themselves as superior “Aryans” in books they wrote about the cultural history of Southern India. Many Indian writers ignored the possibility that Tamil Brahmins were not racially distinct from the rest of the Tamil population throughout the early twentieth century.35 Some Tamil Brahmin intellectuals saw themselves as a distinct racial group from the rest of South Indians and as the bringers of civilisation and culture to the South. Srinivasa Aiyangar wrote that “in Tamil there is no literature unconnected with ethics or religion and there is no ethics or religion in India without the Aryan influence.”36 Another Brahmin author, Krishnaswami Aiyangar, similarly also argued that history in South India began with the coming of the Aryan Brahmins.37

Race and caste were therefore the primary basis upon which ideas of non-Brahmin Tamil inferiority was discursively constructed. Not only were all non-Tamil Brahmins identified as belonging to the Shudra and untouchable castes, but colonial writing was littered with disparaging ‘racial’ critiques of non-Brahmin Tamils. This alienated Tamils from these tropes when constructing oppositional identities to assert themselves against Brahmins and non-Tamil Indians. Instead, ethnographic critiques against Brahmanical Hinduism and the caste system were utilised by Dravidian leaders to project and position a civilisational proximity between Tamils and Europeans, vis a vis the Brahmins, on the basis of rationalism, social progressivism !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! rev. ed. (1915; repr., Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1969), 33. In his memoirs, the influential writer and artist James Forbes describes skin colour as the basis of different ranks in the Varna or caste system. James Forbes, Oriental Memoirs: A Narrative of Seventeen Years Residence in India (London: R. Bentley, 1834), 72, quoted in Susan Bayly, “Caste and “Race” in the Colonial Ethnography of India,” in The Concept of Race in South Asia, ed. Peter Robb (Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 173. 34 Mahadev Moreshwar Kunte, The Vicissitudes of Aryan Civilization in India: An Essay which Treats of the History of the Vedic and Buddhistic Polities, Explaining their Origin, Prosperity, and Decline (Oriental Printing Press, Bombay, 1880), 21-22. 35 Muttusvami Srinivasa Aiyangar, Tamil Studies: Essays on the History of the Tamil People, Language, Religion and Literature, rev. ed. (1914; repr., New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1998), 6, 10, 19, 60; Sakkottai Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Some Contributions of South India to Indian Culture, rev. ed. (1923; repr.; New Delhi: Cosmo Publications, 1981), 1. 36 M.S Aiyangar, Tamil Studies, 385. 37 S.K. Aiyangar, Some Contributions, 1

! 161! and a scientific outlook. At the same time, the existing corpus of writing that linked Tamil Brahmins to Aryans was utilised to reinforce the image of Tamil Brahmins as foreign outsiders. An attack on the caste system was an integral component of Dravidian ideology, since caste was the basis of Brahmin superiority, either within Brahmanical Hinduism or through the racial assumptions contained within ethnographic understandings about the origins of the caste system. For non-Brahmin elites, the inaccessibility of what M. N. Srinivas would later describe as Sankritisation as a strategy to increase their social prestige relative to the Brahmins, resulted in a fetishisation of what Dipesh Chakrabarty has broadly termed “colonial hyper- rationalism”.38 Amongst Dravidian reformers in Madras, it took a form that was radically at odds with religious tradition. In Malaya, early Dravidian newspapers like Munnetram (Progress) regularly featured stories that described the scientific achievements of European figures like Thomas Edison, which can be read as an attempt by the Tamil editor, G. Sarangapany, to familiarise their readerships with the history and scientific achievements of the West.39

A fundamental tension therefore existed within Indian nationalism between the need to adopt “Western” scientific progress on the one hand, and to carve a distinctly non- Western site of tradition and culture. For Dravidian reformers, such a distinction was less apparent, which resulted in a much more iconoclastic attitude towards caste practices and other traditional “superstitions.”

(IMAGE REMOVED)

Figure 6. A copy of Munnetram. Note the newspaper’s choice of an angel, a trope that borrows more from European than Tamil visual cultures, as its cover image from an issue from the 1930s.40

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 38 Chakrabarty argues that the colonial legacy of hyper-rationalism has impaired the ability of Indian Marxists to engage with religious traditions. Chakrabarty, “Radical Histories,” 259-60. I have borrowed Dinesh Sathisan’s reading of Chakrabarty’s work in relation to Tamil newspapers in Malaya to make a broader link between “colonial hyper-rationalism” and the Dravidian movement. Dinesh Sathisan, “The Power of Print: Tamil Newspapers in Malaya and the Imagining of Tamil Cultural Identity, 1930-1940” (master’s thesis, National University of Singapore, 2008), 18. 39 Munnetram, February 12, 1931, 3. Periyar also utilised his newspapers, Kudi Arasu and Viduthalai to write about the importance of science and a scientific outlook. Mahendran, “Periyar,” 361. 40 Munnetram, January 1, 1931, cover page.

! 162!

Social Reform in Malaya

The chief proponents of both Dravidian and Indian nationalism in Singapore were deeply involved in community efforts to improve the lives of untouchables there through the work of the Tamil Reform Association and the Indian Association respectively. As a result, they had a significant influence on evolving identity discourses within the untouchable community. The negotiation of untouchable identity and social strategies that were employed to challenge caste prejudice were however, heavily imbricated in deep-seated ideological conflicts between Indian leaders in Malaya who were influenced by either Indian nationalism or Dravidian nationalism. These conflicts mirrored the tensions in India that existed between the Congress movement and Periyar’s Self Respect Movement since 1925, when Periyar left the Congress after being disillusioned with what he saw as the Brahmin elitism of its leadership.41 These tensions also involved the differing values and goals of each movement with respect to the question of caste prejudice.

Individuals and groups who supported the Congress vigorously attempted to promote a pan-Indian identity amongst Indians in Malaya with an emphasis on fostering a sense of belonging to the nascent Indian nation. For members of the Indian Association who were oriented towards India - those who had been born in and saw their futures in India - a primary aim of the organisation was therefore to socialise future Indian citizens in the values and narratives that were seen as an essential component for sustaining the statehood of a subcontinent rife with ethno-linguistic, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 41 For a more detailed analysis of E.V. Ramasamy’s reasons for leaving the INC, refer to N. K. Arooran, “The Tamil Renaissance and Dravidian Nationalism, 1905-1944, with Special Reference to the Works of Maraimalai Atikal,” (PhD diss., University of London, 1976), 180-4. The disdain and suspicion with which Periyar and his followers regarded the Congress has been well documented. Sankar Das Gupta, Periyar E. V. Ramasamy: A Proper Perspective (Triplicane: Vairam Pathippagam, 1975), 23; M.D. Gopalakrishnan, Periyar: Father of the Tamil Race (Madras: Emerald, 1991), 16-17; Mohan Ram, “Ramaswami Naicker and the Dravidian Movement,” Economic and Political Weekly 9, no.6/8 (February 1974): 220. A transcribed conversation between Gandhi and Periyar was featured in Periyar’s Kudi Arasu newspaper. It highlighted the great gulf that existed between the two with regards to the nature of caste and the role of religion. Periyar in particular argued that the abolition of Hinduism was necessary to destroy caste and remove the Brahmin monopoly on power. Conversely Gandhi insisted that reform was possible within Hinduism and the caste system was not inherently evil if the notion of hierarchy could be reformed. “Conversation between Periyar and Gandhi,” Kudi Arasu, September 14, 1927, 4.

! 163! religious, caste and class divisions. Mani notes that prior to the 1920s, identification with the Indian subcontinent was initially subordinated to regional and linguistic identities.42 Members of the Indian Association sought to reverse this trend as a way of engendering greater unity amongst the community. Societal divisions were de- emphasised, and leaders sought to promote a broader “Indian” identity as the primary signifier of identity amongst Indians in Malaya.

Members of the Indian Association included individuals who were oriented towards constructing a future in Malaya for the Indian community and were less concerned with political developments in India. Although this group was increasingly excluded from the leadership of the association from the late 1930s, they too regarded pan- Indian identity as a useful narrative because it facilitated the kind of unity that was perceived as necessary for soliciting greater political leverage and concessions from the government in order to raise the general prestige of the Indian community and of themselves as potential leaders. Acquiring the mantle of leadership required fostering a sense of connection between the Indian labouring masses, which were mostly Tamil in composition, and Indian elites who were primarily drawn from other ethnic communities. Social support for labourers, apart from being viewed as something to be done for its own sake by many socially conscious leaders within the association, was also seen as a means of extending influence over labouring migrants as well, and thereby legitimating claims to leadership.

In an article written for The Indian in 1939, a member of the Indian Association, K.M. Kannampilly lamented how the Indian community stood “supreme” in Malaya for its “abject lack of unity and organised cooperation.”43 During their frequent visits from India, notables from the Indian Civil Service also drove home this point. “For heaven’s sake do not think in terms of caste, creed or religion,” pleaded the ICS Agent of the Government of India, C.S. Venkatachar during a visit to Ipoh in the early 1940s.44 Kannampilly also lamented that the Indian Associations within Malaya were not as strong and influential because they failed to include or adequately represent the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 42 Mani, “Indians in Singapore Society,” 794. 43 Michael R. Stenson, Class, Race and Colonialism in West Malaysia: The Indian case (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1980), 54. 44 “Indian Agent’s Appeal to Community: Sink your Differences, Opening of Chamber of Commerce at Ipoh,” The Indian, March 13, 1941, 3.

! 164! majority of the community, the migrant labourers. 45 He criticised the Indian associations for failing to appreciate that the Indian labourer was “the community’s greatest force and the strongest weapon” that it could use “in its fight for its civil rights.”46 He argued that Indian labourers needed to be organised and be made to participate in the struggle for their own rights. In a statement illustrative of how extending support to Indian labour was seen as an instrumental means of increasing the political leverage of the wider Indian community, Kannampilly remarked “[o]ur vested interest is in the indispensible labourer. We must build it up, strengthen it, and thereby strengthen ourselves as a community.”47

With regards to the question of caste prejudice, as discussed in the previous chapter, many Indian leaders associated with Malaya’s Indian Association tended to focus on class issues since, in the Malayan context, Tamil labourers were identified as an important group due to their numerical dominance amongst the Indians and because of their vital importance to the Malayan economy. While caste consciousness was officially viewed as something that hindered Indian unity, the specificities of caste persecution were largely ignored. Recognising and addressing caste subdivisions within the labouring community offered no strategic benefits for achieving the wider political goals of the Association unlike in India where, since the untouchable castes were a significant social group with an increasingly articulated distinct and politically salient identity, their cooperation within the movement was a necessary component of Congress strategy.

Indeed in Malaya, actively challenging caste divisions ran the risk of alienating non- untouchable Tamil labourers, who largely retained a very strong sense of caste consciousness from the 1920s to the 1940s, when the Indian Association in Singapore was most actively involved in social outreach. As discussed in the previous chapter, this resulted in the disadvantage of Adi Dravidas often being addressed through the trope of class, rather than caste. The intersectional identity of the Adi Dravida as both an untouchable and a working class municipal or plantation labourer meant that their social issues were often bundled together with broader concerns facing the entire

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 45 Stenson, Class, Race and Colonialism, 54. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid., 55.

! 165! Tamil labouring community, such as alcoholism, unequal pay with labourers of other races and inadequate educational, medical and housing facilities. It is telling that when expressing its condolences to the relatives of R.B. Krishnan, a prominent member of the Indian Association, following his death in 1940, an Adi Dravida Sangam in Singapore noted his past efforts in helping “poor Indians,” rather than the untouchable community specifically.48

When caste was addressed, members of the Indian Association were largely influenced by Gandhi’s public campaigns against untouchability. In particular, elites were influenced by Gandhi’s gradualist policy of reform through persuasion, and the acquisition of a broad-based consensus rather than through an iconoclastic attack on prevailing traditions. Reform-minded members of the elite envisioned a kind of hierachised diversity existing within a greater Indian unity bounded by humanistic principles. Indian elites aimed at improving the lot of untouchable Tamils and labourers, and nurtured a sense of social responsibility among the middle and upper castes for the former’s upliftment. However this fell short of challenging the basis of social stratification or the status quo. Elites were comfortable being seen as the progressive leaders of a stratified Indian community, but shied away from being directly identified with Indian labourers who occupied the lowest rung of Malayan society. Thus they aimed at reforming the excesses of caste prejudice without necessarily advocating the destruction of caste categories and indeed social hierarchies more generally.

The Indian, a Malayan English-language newspaper published articles that discussed Gandhi’s strategy with a degree of nuance, made its readers well aware of untouchable leaders’ disquiet for Gandhi’s thinking. An article in 1936 for instance described issues and criticisms that had arisen against Gandhi’s Harijan movement for the upliftment of untouchables.49 It mentioned how Gandhi had avoided the issue of temple entry for untouchables while touring “orthodox strongholds” like Madurai, which led to some questioning his motivations. The article also highlighted that Rettamalai Srinivasan, a prominent Tamil untouchable activist in India who had taken offence to the very term “Harijan,” indicating that it was the source of widespread !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 48 “Singapore Adi Dravida Sangam,” Tamil Murasu, November 20, 1940, 2. 49 “The Harijan Movement and Gandhi,” The Indian, February 8, 1936, 4.

! 166! resentment from untouchables who felt that it was utilised without their consultation. Other articles made mention of Gandhi’s suggestion that temple entry should not be sought in places where a minority disagreed with it; instead, efforts had to be made to change public opinion and elicit unanimous approval for such reforms.50 In Malaya, Indian Association members and other Congress-inspired individuals made attempts to improve the living standards of untouchables without upsetting Hindu conservatives by challenging the entire caste system and radically proposing an altering of the status quo.

By contrast, Dravidian leaders who emerged in Singapore from the early 1930s were influenced by Periyar were deeply suspicious of the Indian National Congress, which they viewed as a movement dominated by Brahmins with a bias for North India and the Hindi language. Instead of a pan-Indian identity, they promoted a linguistic Tamil identity that by the end of the 1940s corresponded to increasing demands for a future separate Tamil state. Caste and untouchability were treated in a much more radical manner within the Tamil Reform Movement, which, at least ideologically, set out to characterise Tamil culture as being inherently egalitarian and casteless. The organisation also took much more active steps to change public opinion about caste matters, which included grassroots activism. In 1933, during a mass meeting of Tamils at the Memorial Hall in Singapore, representatives of the Tamil Reform Association announced their fourteen point social agenda. Clearly listed amongst these goals in no uncertain terms was the association’s plan to “get rid of untouchability,” demonstrating the far more direct manner in which caste was addressed by Dravidian reformers in Singapore.51

Tamil reformers constructed a much more elaborate discursive framework to challenge caste consciousness. Although Tamil reformers also aimed to change attitudes by persuasion and the solicitation of consent, they were also willing to employ coercive strategies. They habitually tried to influence state legislative procedure in their attempts to stamp out caste and other “backward” Hindu practices, and did not shy away from controversial activities, such as advocating for and

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 50 “Mahatma and Untouchability: Work not given up,” The Indian, April 11, 1936, 5. 51 “Aims of Singapore Tamils, Fourteen Points to be Pursued,” Straits Times, March 28, 1933, 17.

! 167! popularising secular ‘reform marriages,’ that did away with the need for Brahmin priests and the religious aspects of traditional Hindu marriages.52

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, questions of identity for the Adi Dravida community were imbricated in structures of patronage and support from Dravidian reformers and Indian nationalist sympathisers, as well as being tied to ideological influences from both groups. Ultimately, during the postwar period the identity narratives that were promoted by the Tamil Reform Movement gained ascendency and untouchable Tamils chose to adopt a casteless linguistic Tamil identity. Although this outcome was far from determined during the interwar period, it was during this time that Tamil reformers made significant inroads into the Adi Dravida community and constructed the institutional building blocks for future community efforts.

The Indian Association in Singapore !

The Indian Association in Singapore was formed in 1923.53 It was not the first organisation in Malaya to base its membership on a broader “Indian identity”, this having been established in 1904 in Ipoh with a few others being set up across the Malayan peninsula in the early years of the twentieth century. These early organisations were set up as sports and recreational clubs, modeled after their English counterparts.54 The Indian Association in Singapore of 1923 was the first organisation that arose as a direct reaction to the perceived disunity of the Indian community in Malaya and the first united Indian organisation to action a social and political agenda. After its inception, the Singapore Indian Association continued to be a model upon which other like-minded Indian Associations were based across Malaya, particularly

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 52 Vasandakumari Nair has critiqued the strategic approach of the Tamil Reform Association. She argues that in contrast to the voluntary gradualist approach of the Indian Association, the TRA was heavily reliant on unsuccessful attempts to solicit governmental bans on certain Hindu practices that its members deemed backward or socially regressive. Vasandakumari Nair, “Tamils Reform Association: Singapore (1932-61)” (honours thesis, University of Singapore, 1972), 42-44. 53 The Indian Association still functions in Singapore at its new premises on 69 Balestier Road. It has evolved into a members-only sports and recreation club and no longer participates in politics or wider social welfare. 54 Sathisan, “Power of Print,” 109.

! 168! with regard to the creation of social services divisions that aimed to address issues within the labouring Indian community.55

These associations were later organised under the Central Indian Association of Malaya (CIAM) in 1936.56 The Indian Association in Singapore aimed to represent all Indians on the island, regardless of religion, linguistic affinity or region of origin. It initially attracted mostly English-educated elites from the Indian community into its ranks. The association promoted a pan-Indian identity, a focus reflected by the ethno- linguistic and religious diversity of the organisation’s early leadership, which included prominent Indian individuals in Malaya such as Rajabali Jumabhoy, Dr. Bashir A Mallal, R. B. Krishnan, Dr. Chotta Singh, K S Bhaizada, E. V. Davis, D. J. Dawson, K. A. N. Iyer, Annukul Chander and S Bashir Ahmad.57 At a speech delivered by the ICS agent to Malaya, C.S. Venkatachar at the occasion of the launch of a new Indian Association in Penang, he described how even using the word “Indian” was at the time a political act, reflected the social aims of Indian Associations in Malaya during the 1920s.

I would, however, submit that real emphasis should be laid on the word Indian. When we begin to think, feel and act as Indians first and everything else next, we have achieved that unity for which we strive and struggle. …The mere term Indian then connotes a state of Indians becoming united. There are some people who at times tell us that the expression Indian is a mere slogan. Such people have at the back of their mind the diversities of Indian social and religious conditions. … I would decry the existence of sectional or other kinds of organisations intended to serve a limited or a particular function.58

The association embarked on a series of programmes that aimed at improving the plight of Indian labourers in Malaya. It was directly inspired by the growth of the nationalist and reformist movements in India that had been gaining momentum since the turn of the century. R.B. Krishnan, a member of the Indian Association and the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 55 “Indians in Conference: The Standing Committee’s Meeting. Labourer’s Land Settlement,” The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, March 26, 1929, 5. 56 Netto, Passage of Indians, 58. 57 Ibid., 32. 58 “New Premises of Butterworth United Indian Association Opened: No Need to Say “United”-Mr. C.S Venkatachar’s Advice,” The Indian, January 23, 1941, 2.

! 169! editor of its English language newspaper, The Indian, wrote about the growing enthusiasm for social reform amongst Indian elites and the Indian intelligentsia during the 1920s. He described a new concern amongst them for the welfare of Indian labourers, and he claimed that this concern was partly the result of visits to Malaya by prominent Indian reformers.59 The growing Indian upper and middle classes were also getting increasingly concerned with the image of the Indian community in the eyes of the other ethnic groups during this period. They were especially concerned with negative perceptions of the Indian lower classes and the uncomfortable associations that were being drawn with the wider Indian community.

The stories and editorials that ran in The Indian are indicative of the strategic approach taken by the organisation with regard to social transformation. Like many members of the Indian National Congress, members of the Indian Association believed that efforts to socially uplift the Indians in Malaya, which had to a large degree been initiated by the upper classes, should have remained under the exclusive leadership of those groups. As such, few efforts were made to give the Indian working class any real agency within the movement.

The labouring classes were initially excluded from the organisation because some members expressed reservations about freely mixing with “the lower orders.”60 Others fretted that labourers would turn up to meetings “half-naked.”61 There was no significant emphasis made on laying the groundwork for proportional representation from different socio-economic sections of the community. By 1926, the association began to realise it had been failing in its primary social objectives and needed to open its doors to a wider membership in order to lay claim to representing the entire Indian community.62 Many individuals within the association, including committee member E.V. Davis, argued that much more needed to be done for the labouring community and the poorer classes. Through a concerted membership drive it managed to recruit

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 59 The reformers he listed included very distinguished individuals who were better known to the Indian English educated elite and relatively unknown amongst the labouring masses. His list excluded E.V. Ramasamy whose visit to Malaya and Singapore in 1929 resulted in the birth of the Singaporean Tamil reform movement. Krishnan, Indians in Malaya, 28. 60 Netto, Passage of Indians, 32. 61 Ibid., 36. 62 The Indian Association in Singapore had around 800 members in 1926. “A Gratifying Sign: Interest in Public Affairs,” The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advisor, October 29, 1926, 7.

! 170! over a thousand members by the late 1920s.63 Although this broadened its base, power and leadership remained concentrated among members of elite socio-economic backgrounds and no efforts were made to encourage the emergence of leadership from the middle or working classes. This elitism seriously undermined the association’s efforts, and although individuals like Kannampilly continued to voice the need to include and empower Indian labourers some sixteen years after the formation of the first association, efforts to enhance inclusion continued to be limited to membership drives, which were frequently promoted in order to increase the bargaining power of the association. In 1941, just prior to the Japanese invasion of Malaya, The President of the CIAM, N. Raghavan, speaking at the clerical union hall encouraged every Indian from every background to join their local branch of the Indian Association and give it their full support in order to give the associations greater leverage to help them.64

Despite the opening of membership to Indians of every class, the lower strata, who were mostly Tamil, were largely held to be incapable of independent self- improvement. Writing to The Indian, a writer criticising a proposal to allow Tamil labourers to vote on a proposed ban on the sale of toddy, argued that they could not have been expected to exercise that decision because “[t]he Tamils [are] like little children...”65 The approach of the Association continued to be largely characterised by a distant paternalism. Needless to say, it failed to establish close links with the labouring community. Comments like these also contributed to the perception amongst the Tamil-educated middle and working classes that they were looked down upon by Indian elites and fuelled a sense that Tamils were not being adequately represented. Dinesh Sathisan notes that the bulk of CIAM’s leadership during this period was comprised of English-educated Malayalees and Brahmins.66

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 63 Netto, Passage of Indians, 36-38. 64 “Indians and Indian Associations,” The Indian, January 23, 1941, 6. An effort was made by members to get every possible Indian to join the various Indian Associations. “How I.As Are Run,” The Indian, February 13, 1941, 5. 65 “Ramasamy to Decide?,” The Indian, January 18, 1936, 3. 66 Sathisan, “Power of Print,” 111.

! 171! The Indian Association, Pan-Indianism and the Indian Association’s Increasing Identification with the Congress Movement

Members of the Indian Association remained wary of introducing ethno-linguistic proportionality to the organisational structure of the association. Plans were initially made to allow individuals originating from the Madras Presidency to have a larger representation in the management committee in recognition of the fact that Tamils and other South Indians formed a majority amongst Indians in Singapore.67 These plans were scrapped in 1936, due to fears that allowing any one group to have too much power would breed communalism and erode the pan-Indian identity that the association was promoting.68 This move effectively prevented Tamils in Singapore from translating their numerical dominance into a representative stake in the leadership of the Indian community, a fact that did not go unnoticed and continued to fuel a sense of injustice amongst Tamil-educated leaders within the Dravidian movement. It is not likely that they were ignorant of the parallels between Periyar’s fears of Tamil marginalisation under a non-Tamil dominated Congress in India and the situation in Malaya.

The Indian Association’s leadership continued to argue that insufficient political representation for Indians in Malaya as a whole was the primary problem facing the Indian community and that a lack of unity was its primary cause. Affirming the conclusions of the 1935 Annual Report of the Indian Agent in Malaya, a contributor to The Indian wrote:

We agree with the Rao Sahib that there are too many Indian associations all over Malaya and that the endless petty differences and disputes destroy any chance of unity and obtaining respect in the eyes of the Government and other communities.69

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 67 Netto, Passage of Indians, 35. Many Tamils were unhappy about the disproportionate representation they were receiving in Indian organisations in Singapore despite their numbers. A.C. Suppiah, one of the founders of the Tamil Reform Association and the Tamil Murasu newspaper, expressed his disappointment with the fact that in 1933 Tamils gained only two out of eleven available seats in the Hindu Advisory Board. Kirupanantha Kumar s/o Palaiyan, “A Biography of A. C. Suppiah” (honours thesis, National University of Singapore, 1998), 12. 68 Netto, Passage of Indians, 35. 69 “The Indian Agent’s Report,” The Indian, December 28, 1935, 2.

! 172! The Indian laid a heavy emphasis on reporting the activities of the Congress Party in India, as well as the plight of overseas Indian communities in other parts of the world, including Africa. Letters from India were regularly published, demonstrating the sentiment that culturally, the Malayan Indian community was part of a much larger transnational pan-Indian community.70 The title of the book authored by Krishnan, Indians in Malaya: A Pageant of Greater India, was itself indicative of how prominent figures within the Indian Association sought to advance an inclusive transnational Indian identity. Another article in the Indian published in 1941, authored by a member of the Indian Civil Service, revisited the historical links between India and Malaya and proclaimed, “Today…Malaya has again become part of greater India.”71

Although connections with India were continually emphasised, elements within the association were well aware of the uniquely Malayan context in which it arose, and of the specific political goals that the association had in Malaya. Remembering the formation of the Indian Association in Singapore, one of its founders, Rajabali Jumabhoy, recalled:

Everybody was an Indian. There was no Pakistan or Bangladesh on the map of Southeast Asia. Many of us were bold enough to feel that we had left behind all communal differences plaguing the Indian sub-continent, and this itself was very satisfying.72

Despite an initial focus on a specifically Malayan context, the Association increasingly linked itself with the politics of the Congress movement in India towards the late 1930s. N. Raghavan, who became the President of the Central Indian Association of Malayan (C.I.A.M), shifted the association’s orientation much more overtly towards the cause of Congress nationalism. Michael Stenson notes that he

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 70 In one such letter, a Mr. S.A Waiz from Bombay wrote to the paper to express his displeasure at the fact that immigration policies at the time were favouring Chinese immigration over Indian immigration, expressing his fear that the Chinese would “eventually win.” He added that he did not wish to see the Malay Peninsula become part of “Greater China” as opposed to “Greater India.” “Indians in Malaya: A Message From India,” The Indian, December 28, 1935, 4. 71 “Interdependence between India and Malaya, Ancient Contacts Still Continue: Community’s Part in Malaya’s Development,” The Indian, January 15, 1941, 2. 72 Netto, Passage of Indians, 32. The book attributes this quote to Jumabhoy in 1945. It is probably taken from a much later date however, given the reference to Bangladesh.

! 173! sometimes wore khadi and was greeted by his supporters with shouts of “Nehruji Ki Jai” (long live Nehru), “Gandhi Ki Jai” (long live Gandhi) and “Vande Mataram.”73

This did not go uncriticised within the Association. Encouraged by local-born Indians, R.B. Krishnan, a prominent member of the Association in Singapore and the former editor of The Indian, wrote a lengthy criticism of the C.I.A.M’s focus on subcontinental politics in the Straits Times.74 His letter highlighted deep cleavages that were emerging within the Indian Association. He noted that disgruntled local- born Indians were advocating the formation of separate societies for local-born Indians who identified with Malaya, and domiciled Indians who continued to look to India for political ties and support. Krishnan attributed the skewed power dynamic within the association, which by the early 1940s rested largely with domiciled Indians, to the “lethargy” of local-born Indians, which he contrasted with the “enterprising immigrant type.” 75 Krishnan criticised the C.I.A.M for being unrepresentative of local-born Indians and for issuing “fascist fiats” without consultation.76 He argued that whilst Indians could continue to look to India for cultural and spiritual ties, they had to stop forming political ties or looking to the Government of India for redress of their grievances in Malaya. Krishnan also criticised the Singapore Indian Association for alienating local-born Indians with its excessive focus on India. He gestured towards the growing evolution of a “Malayan” community comprised of “the polyglot inhabitants of Malaya” and encouraged the Indian community to be a part of it.77

Krishnan’s criticisms reflect not only the shift of power within the Indian Associations towards Indian-born members, but a change in the association’s orientation in the 1930s. Previously, while being influenced by Gandhi and the reform activities associated with the Congress, the Association had expressed loyalty to the Crown and support for British rule even after the Congress had begun to take a more radical course of non-cooperation. This was demonstrated by frequent declarations of loyalty to the King and the empire at conferences and talks and during festivities !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 73 Stenson, Class, Race and Colonialism, 55. 74 “The Problem of Local Born Indians: Must Declare Allegiance to Malaya,” The Straits Times, March 9, 1939, 15. 75 Ibid. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid.

! 174! organised to mark royal coronations. Whilst displaying respect for Indian nationalist leaders and reproducing the Congress’ stress on Indian unity, the Indian Association remained apolitical, largely focusing on representing the domestic concerns of Indians in Malaya.

The donning of homespun cloth by the Association’s leadership in the early 1940s signaled a stronger alignment with the subcontinental politics of the Congress, which itself was radicalising during this period. The radicalisation of the Indian Association was another contributing factor to the problematic relationship that the association had with supporters of Dravidian nationalism in Malaya. Periyar and his followers had spoken out in support of British rule following the formation of the Self Respect Movement in 1925, and Periyar himself had later advocated a gradual withdrawal of the British, fearing that a sudden withdrawal would subject Tamils to the Hindi imperialism of the Congress, which would have been worse than Crown rule. Tamil reformist leaders in Singapore like A.C. Suppiah were enthusiastic supporters of British rule and although some members felt it expedient to distance themselves from views that ran counter to the widely popular independence movement, supporters of Dravidian ideology largely had a very different relationship with and attitude toward British imperialism, often seeing it in a positive light.78 Ganapathi Pillai, who joined the I.N.A in his early twenties under in Malaya during the Second World War, recalled in an interview that the Tamil public were unreceptive to Periyar’s pro-British stance which was seen as being “anti-India,” after a speech was widely reported in which Periyar declared that he preferred British rule to North Indian domination.79

Adi Dravidas had since the 19th century taken a very different view of British colonialism. Influential Adi Dravida writers like Ayothee Thass Pandithar had described British rule and Western civilisation as enlightened, benevolent and

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 78 A.C. Suppiah had urged the Tamil Reform Association to display portraits of British sovereigns in its premises before the Second World War. Other members turned down his suggestion. Suppiah further refused to make any financial contributions to Subhas Chandra Bose and the Indian National Army during the Japanese Occupation, and did not attend any of his mass rallies, signaling his attitudes towards the independence movement. S/o Palaiyan, “Biography of A.C. Suppiah,” 45-46. 79 Shigematsu Shinji, Interview Documents of Overseas South Indians in Malaysia, Singapore and South India (Nagoya: Department of Oriental History, School of Letters, University of Nagoya, 1984), 72.

! 175! emancipatory. Ayothee Thass had received the support of Theosophical Society, and was part of a section of untouchables who had benefitted from British policy and missionary patronage. He compared the ways that untouchables were treated by the British favourably with the treatment they received at the hands of caste Hindus.80 Writing in 1909, Ayothee Thass declared that the British:

…have shared their prosperity with fair and just rule extended to all , regardless of caste, language and religion. In India’s 100 million wish to live under the rule of the British. Only a small minority don’t want to be under them and have expressed so with shrill voice. Those who are asking for such self rule are generally leaders from the high castes. They have swayed the masses…81

Within Adi Dravida intellectual traditions at least, the push for Indian independence was presented as being of questionable salience or benefit to untouchables. In Malaya, while appreciative of the efforts of the Indian Association to uplift the untouchable community, they were arguably ambivalent towards the association’s aggressive push for an alignment of the Malayan Indian interests with the Indian independence movement.

The Social Programmes of the Indian Association

The Indian Association’s socially-focused activities were mostly targeted at the Indian labouring community as a whole. It petitioned the government for better salaries and working conditions for Indian labourers and the Association also set up a number of schools for Indian labourers. In 1927, a committee member of the Association, the Reverend Solomon Pakianathan, suggested that the organisation begin setting up night schools for labourers.82 Within the first year the program faced great difficulties expanding beyond one school due to a lack of volunteers, perhaps indicating that in its early years, the Indian Association’s more privileged members maintained their reluctance to engage substantially with the labouring community. By 1936 however, the Association was running three Tamil schools.83 A school at no. 9 Alkaff Avenue held evening English classes for labourers. Another afternoon school !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 80 Aloysius, Ayothidasa Sinthanaigal, 19 81 Ibid., 112. 82 “Social Service,” The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advisor, December 23, 1927, 9. 83 “Singapore Indian Association: Its Programme of Activities,” The Indian, May 2, 1936, 2.

! 176! at no. 1 Short Street was specifically set up for Tamil students who attended English schools in the morning.

Interestingly, the Association set up a school for Adi Dravida children in Jalan Besar, recognising that they were barred from other Tamil schools.84 This approach, as opposed to campaigning for the inclusion of untouchable children in existing Tamil schools once again demonstrates the limited politics of the Association, which was to work towards alleviating the position of untouchables with minimal impact on upper castes. This also suggests that the Association had limited grassroots links within the community with which to employ a more radical strategy.

Although the Association and its members focused on the labouring community as a whole, it did engage with the untouchable community as a discrete entity in a number of ways that, while perhaps well intentioned, often reinforced their separate identities and facilitated segregation. The earliest record in the National Archives of Singapore that specifically mentions an untouchable community in Singapore is the Singapore Improvement Trust document of 1927.85 It details a request made by a Ceylon Tamil Municipal Commissioner, Dr. K. K. Pathy, to the government for the allotment of a temporary plot of land in Jalan Besar for the roughly three thousand strong Pariah community in the area, for the construction of a make-shift temple beside an abattoir.86 During this period, untouchables were barred from entering Hindu temples and had to build separate shrines for their communities.

Pathy was himself a member of the Indian Association and others like him were similarly engaged with the untouchable community because of their occupational status as municipal council labourers. Some of the first Adi Dravida Sangams in Malaya were set up in the early 1920s with the aid of individuals influenced by Gandhian philosophy. 87 The association was involved in the first Adi Dravida

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 84 V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 24, 2011. 85 “Pariah community ask for a plot of land for Temple,” Singapore Improvement Trust, November 16, 1927, SIT File 953/27, HDB 1008, NAS. 86 Ibid; “Indian Football Clubs: Proposal for Singapore Association,” Straits Times, January 21, 1928, 10. “Arrival of Dr. Tagore in Singapore,” Malayan Saturday Post, July 30, 1927, 15; “Dr. K. K. Pathy,” The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, January 25, 1935, 15. 87 One of the founders of one of Singapore’s first Adi Dravida Sangams, KM Moorthy was a fervent supporter of Gandhi and his methods. Sathisan, “Power of Print,” 103.

! 177! conference held in Malaya, on the 31st of July 1932 in Singapore, and continued to send representatives to subsequent annual conferences thereafter.88 Other higher caste Hindus who were later aligned with the Dravidian movement in Singapore were also instrumental in setting up Adi Dravida and other low caste Sangams in Singapore in the early 1920s for the upliftment of the large numbers of untouchable Tamils working in the municipality.89 Both the broad coalitions of social entities that were promoting Congress-inspired pan-Indian identity on the one hand, and an exclusionary Tamil identity on the other, continued to be actively involved in the affairs of Adi Dravida Sangams in the 1920s and 1930s. The alternative strategies and suggestions offered by members of both camps created divisions within the untouchable community. Individuals aligned with the Indian Associations notably tended to pursue a far less radical and confrontational approach to the issues of prejudice facing the untouchable community.

At annual Adi Dravida conferences resolutions were often passed in favour of ending the ban on temple entry for untouchables. It is worth noting that despite the attendance of members of the Indian Association at these conferences, they never made similar requests to various temples governing bodies or lobbied government to legislate change, instead preferring to deliver speeches telling untouchables to improve their educational and hygiene levels, avoid alcohol and participate in the savings programmes of cooperative societies.90 It is worth noting for instance that Dr. Pathy, the Municipal Commissioner who made the request for land for the construction of a Pariah temple was himself the honorary secretary of Singapore’s Hindu Association, which did not attempt to advocate for temple entry rights for untouchables in major Hindu temples. 91 Changes in social attitudes towards untouchables, it was commonly argued, would be conceded with conspicuous changes in the lifestyles, appearances and attitudes of the untouchable community. Speeches !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 88 Indian Association members frequently gave talks at Adi Dravida Sangams, and the prominent lawyer and member of the Indian Association, S.C. Goho used the Johore Adi Dravida Sangam to discuss the formation of an Indian Association in Johore in 1940, which illustrates the links that members tried to form within the Adi Dravida community. “Johore Bahru Indian Meeting,” Straits Times, September 5, 1940, 10. 89 A.C. Suppiah, one of the founders of the Tamil Reform Association in Singapore for instance, was in 1923 the chairman of the Singai Ahampadiyar Mahajana Sangam, a low caste organisation instrumental in the setting up of an Adi Dravida Sangam in Singapore. S/o Palaiyan, “Biography of A.C. Suppiah,” 15. 90 “Disorderly Scenes at Conference,” The Singapore Free Press Mercantile Advisor, 3. 91 “Untitled,” Straits Times, December 4, 1924, 12.

! 178! were often couched in very paternalistic and condescending terms, and while caste prejudice was roundly condemned in rousing oratory, blame was frequently also implicitly ascribed to the Adi Dravidas for the low regard with which they were held.

The Indian Association in Singapore and Tamil Hindu Conservatives

The leadership of the various Indian Associations was largely comprised of English- educated Indian elites, the Tamil-educated working and middle classes being largely excluded. The Indian Association in Miri in , which lacked a substantial number of wealthy, English-educated Indians, was one exception. At a speech delivered at the opening of the Association, the President K.L. Pillai argued that the organisation belonged to everyone regardless of their backgrounds.

They may say that most of the members of this Association are not “educated”, but if one can agree that literacy in any language is education, then I can safely say that the so called uneducated are not so … Moreover an “Association” should not be the monopoly of a special group. Each and every member of the community has an equal right in the association irrespective of caste, creed, education or status. … If in other places the group that earns less is not included in “Associations” it is because the are not dragged in for financial considerations.92

Raising the issue of the exclusion of Indian lower classes from other regional Associations, Pillai attempted to argue that this was because they were not expected to shoulder the financial responsibility of membership fees and financial contributions. This was not the case in Miri, where the vast majority of Indians were working class and they faced less competition within the organisation. Pillai’s comments are interesting because they highlight the continued perception that Indian Associations were elitist and that Indian lower classes continued to feel a sense of exclusion within Indian Associations elsewhere, and that vernacular education, Tamil education in particular, was looked down upon and associated with lower class status.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 92 “Miri Indians Form Association: Opening Speech by President,” The Indian, March 13, 1941, 5.

! 179! Tamil-educated working and middle classes were excluded from leadership roles, and members and affiliates of the Association took a hostile stance towards groups that identified with Dravidian ideology, which they regarded as communal and divisive.93 The Indian Association in Singapore recognised that Tamil speakers comprised a vast majority amongst the community and appreciated the need for some form of vernacular outreach. The Association published a Tamil version of The Indian, which was edited by Solomon Pakianathan, the same Methodist clergyman who had initially proposed the setting up of night schools for labourers.94

The Association also gained the support of Tamil social clubs, such as the Tamil Brotherhood Association, which opposed what they perceived to be the divisive communalism of Dravidian ideology. In a letter to the editor of The Indian, a member of the brotherhood “severely condemned” the idea of forming an “All-Malaya Tamils Association,” a view which was shared by the C.I.A.M.95 The writer from Singapore, K.K. Nambiar, argued that the outcome of such an association would be “the predisposing cause of a future “Tamilistan,” highlighting fears about the link between pan-Tamil organisations and the push for Tamil separatism. The Association also counted amongst its members Soundarajan Iyengar and Narasimha Iyengar, two Tamil Brahmin editors of The Nesan, a conservative Tamil newspaper.96 Through their newspaper they promoted a specific vision of Tamil identity that was closely associated with Hinduism. Although they adopted a progressive attitude towards some social issues, they remained socially conservative with regard to religious matters.97 It is worth noting, for instance, that members of its editorial staff served in the committees of several Hindu temples in Malaya and had close relations with other temple management committees, at a time when untouchables were barred from entering these places of worship.98

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 93 V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 24, 2011. 94 Netto, Passage of Indians, 38. 95 “All Malaya Tamils’ Association,” The Indian, May 22 May, 1941, 7. 96 Narasimha Iyengar was also the editor of an English language paper, The Pioneer, which began running in Malaya in 1929. “Untitled,” The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, March 23, 1929, 8. Narasimha Iyengar and Soundarajan Iyengar were prominent community figures, mentioned and quoted frequently in newspaper reports about Indian Association meetings and other general meetings of Indians. “Indians in Conference: The Standing Committee’s Meeting. Labourer’s Land Settlement,” The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, March 26, 1929, 5. 97 Sathisan, “Power of Print,” 46. 98 Latha d/o Sinasamy, “Tamil Malar: Voice of the Tamil Community (1964-1980)” (honours thesis, National University of Singapore, 2000), 5, 8.

! 180!

The editors of The Nesan were also staunch supporters of the Congress movement and while promoting Tamil language and culture, portrayed it as part of a larger mosaic of Indian cultural life, often drawing attention to parallel Tamil and Sanskritic influences in Malayan history.99 While the followers of Periyar in the Tamil Reform Association promoted equal rights and better health and educational outcomes for Indian labourers in Malaya vis-à-vis labourers of other racial groups, The Nesan and its editorial staff argued that these social objectives were compatible with Hinduism, promoting instead a religious framework for their definition of authentic Tamil identity.

The Nesan’s pro-Congress and pro-Gandhian politics and its promotion of Brahmanical Hinduism put it directly at odds with Dravidian reformers in Singapore. Dravidian reformer newspapers such as Munnetram and the Tamil Murasu broke the Brahmin monopoly on the Tamil press in the late 1920s. Dinesh Sathisan, who has undertaken a detailed study of the Tamil press in Malaya during this period, argues that “these differences made Tamil newspapers in Malaya a battleground on which issues of Tamil identity in Malaya were debated.”100 The editors of the Nesan found Dravidian ideology deeply threatening because of anti-Brahmanical and anti-Hindu themes and its positioning of Tamil Brahmins as non-Tamil others. They published a criticism of Periyar’s plans to visit Malaya that inspired conservative Hindus groups to try, unsuccessfully, to get the authorities to bar him from entering Malaya on the grounds that it would stir communal tensions.101

Tamil reformers adopted an openly hostile attitude to Brahmins, fuelling the suspicions of Tamil Brahmins in Malaya. In the preface of one of his books, A.C. Suppiah, a co-founder of the Tamil Reform Association in Singapore who was involved in organising Periyar’s first visit to Malaya, wrote: “[l]ike a fox that had been intoxicated by honey, Tamil people had fallen to the scheming Brahmins and had therefore lost their common sense.”102 Members of the TRA also began to utilise

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 99 Dinesh Sathisan, “Speaking for the Diaspora: Tamil Newspapers in Malaya and Singapore as Instruments of Modernity, Protection, Reform and Change, 1930-40,” The Heritage Journal 4 (2009): 78. 100 Sathisan, “Speaking for the Diaspora,” 76. 101 S/o Palaiyan, “Biography of A.C. Suppiah,” 17. 102 Periyar lauded the book, saying that it ought to be read by every Tamilian. A.C. Suppiah, Sundara Murthi Naayanaar Vinotha Criminal Case, translated and quoted in ibid., 31.

! 181! the word paapanar to refer to Brahmins, because they felt that existing designations were too closely entwined with cultural expressions of respect.103

The alliance of the individuals like Soundarajan and Narasimha Iyengar with the CIAM and its message of pan-Indian unity, and the support of conservative Hindu Tamils in Malaya with The Nesan’s stance against Dravidianism, had a great impact not only on the negotiation of Tamil identity in Malaya, but on untouchable identity. The position of The Nesan’s editors with regard to the question of untouchability was made clear during the third annual All-Malaya Adi Dravida Conference held in Kuala Lumpur on January 1936. During the conference a widely publicized confrontation broke over the issue of the representation of the Adi Dravida, or Tamil untouchable community. A sizeable section of the participants objected to the term “Adi Dravida”, deeming it derogatory, and they disrupted proceedings for three hours, creating “scenes of considerable disorder” before leaving in protest.104 They were led by a member of the Selangor Tamil Reform Association, linked to the Singapore Tamil Reform Association started by G. Sarangapany and others in 1931. The group claimed that the “Adi Dravida” label was used without the consent of the community, which favoured being subsumed under the more generic term “Tamil.” They also argued that upper castes and elites were overrepresented at the conference, which was convened without input from the untouchable community. The editor of The Nesan, K. Narasimha Iyer, was present at the meeting and his response to the claims were reflective of the fundamental differences that lay between Dravidianists linked to the Tamil Reform Association and Congress-influenced Malayan Indian elites. The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advisor reported that Iyer pleaded:

… that the Adi-Dravida community should not lose its identity by merging into a bigger community and then lose its opportunities for self-advancement. It should safeguard its interests by remaining a separate entity and work out its own salvation with the co-operation of other sections of the Indian community.105

Other non-untouchable Indian leaders who were invited to give speeches at the conference echoed Iyengar’s comments, urging the untouchable community to retain !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 103 Ibid., 36. The word itself is a reference to the supposed foreign nature of Tamil Brahmins. 104 “Disorderly Scenes at Conference,” The Singapore Free Press Mercantile Advisor, 3. 105 Ibid.

! 182! their separate identity, and arguing that there was nothing inherently offensive about the “Adi Dravida” label. One of the reasons given by a speaker to justify the retention of a name that highlighted the marginal status of the community, was that the Government of India was planning to recognise the untouchable castes in policies that would alleviate social disabilities, and that to abandon the unique designation would reduce the community’s capacity to receive targeted assistance in the future.106 This was a concern that did not apply in Malaya, since the government in the Straits Settlements and the Federated Malay States did not recognise caste status. The insistence on retaining a community designation that highlighted untouchable caste status by individuals who otherwise supported the removal of markers of communal difference in Indian organisations and associations signaled a continuing disinclination on the part of some Tamils to become too closely associated with Tamil untouchables. It also reveals anxieties about the ground that Dravidian reformers were gaining within the Adi Dravida community and the growing popularity of Dravidian Tamil identity.

Dinesh Sathisan argues that in the early 1930s many Adi Dravidas were wary of Dravidian reformers, but by the late 1930s a drift towards Dravidian associations occurred, with the establishment of their Sangams.107 The continued influence of Gandhian strategies amongst the Adi Dravidas was reflected in the news coverage of the disturbance at the Adi Dravida conference, which mentioned that two thirds of the attendees remained after the dissenting group had left in protest.

The Limited Success of the Indian Association’s Social Agenda

By 1941, the CIAM had proclaimed itself the “leader” of the Indian community in Malaya and The Indian ran a story proclaiming that without the Association, the Indian community would have been “like an orphan.” 108 This claim was not recognised by members of the Indian community who felt that the Indian Association was plagued by elitism, a lack of representation and an unwillingness to listen to !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 106 Ibid. 107 Sathisan, “Power of Print,” 103. 108 “No Longer Leaderless,” The Indian, January 23, 1941, 5

! 183! suggestions and criticism from what one writer termed “the underdogs” of the Indian community.109 By the end of the 1930s, large sections of the Adi Dravida community were beginning to look elsewhere for leadership. Although many Adi Dravidas identified with Indian nationalism, or rather the anti-untouchability movement with the Congress, many began to gravitate towards Dravidian nationalism during the 1930s. These groups started to identify with a Dravidian Tamil identity rather than an Adi Dravida identity situated within a larger conception of Indianness. This was accompanied by an increasingly hostile attitude taken by many Adi Dravidas within Malayan Adi Dravida Sangams towards the Indian Association and the Indian National Congress, which was seen as patronising, non-representative, distant and paternalistic. During the 1930s this became a source of division within the Adi Dravida community. This shift towards Dravidian ideology increased substantially after the Second World War, when a linguistically-defined Tamil identity became the dominant identity narrative amongst Tamil former-untouchables. Despite the efforts of the Indian Associations between the 1920s and early 1940s, they failed to retain widespread support or recognition amongst Adi Dravidas after the emergence of Dravidian reform movements that tackled caste prejudice more aggressively.

Through its newspaper, the Indian Association managed to help create a popular consensus amongst Indian elites over the need to defend the rights of labouring Indians as members of a larger imagined Indian community. However the social and class divides proved too great, ultimately limiting the success of the association in terms of effecting actual change in the living conditions and social attitudes of working class Indians. Sinnappah Arasaratnam argues that there were insufficient channels of communication between the educated elite and the lower classes for the dissemination of ideas. The sub-managerial class working in plantations and in the government service had little direct contact with workers. In other instances, language and ethnic divisions prevented effective communication with the labouring workforce, mainly comprised of illiterate Tamils.110 In one article in The Indian that reflected the lack of institutional channels for communication between the educated elites and the lower classes, the newspaper’s labour correspondent recommended that !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 109 “Volunteering Dispute: Indian Association Reforms,” Straits Times, July 20, 1939, 15. 110 Sinnappah Arasaratnam, “Social Reform and Reformist Pressure Groups Among the Indians of Malaya and Singapore 1930-1955,” Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 40, no. 2 (December 1967): 54.

! 184! the Indian upper and middle classes devote one weekend of the month to go and visit labourers individually to instruct them on the merits of fiscal prudency and personal hygiene, amongst other things.111 There is no evidence to indicate that members of the middle and upper classes adopted this suggestion.

Arasaratnam argues that due to limited educational facilities and a lack of social mobility, there was no means for a leadership that might have tackled some of these social issues to arise from the working class Tamil community. Such limitations were not restricted to living conditions; poor educational facilities and exploitative work practices as well as cultural and social issues were, in part, the result of dominant attitudes and practices that existed within the labouring community. These problems included alcohol abuse, physical violence between labourers, caste-based persecution and discrimination, and other ills that were compounded by an extremely loose institutional framework for marriage. Owing to the demographic characteristics of labour migration, many of these problems, especially caste discrimination against untouchables, became seen as specifically Tamil problems, and non-Tamil Indian elites were poorly equipped to deal with these issues due to a lack of grassroots links within the community as well as language barriers.112

The Tamil Reform Association and Dravidian Ideology in Singapore

There are many scholarly sources that detail the personalities, activities and ideology of the Tamil Reform Association (TRA) in Singapore, perhaps in much greater detail than sources which focus on the Indian Associations in Malaya. These include published work of scholars like A. Mani and Kernial Singh Sandhu that provide a broad overview of modern Indian history in Singapore and the Malay Peninsula and are still considered authoritative accounts of the community in the region. Dinesh Sathisan has focused on the role of print in Malaya, which was closely linked to Dravidian organisations and the spread of Dravidian ideology. Biographies have also

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 111 “Indian Labour Topics by Our Labour Correspondent,” The Indian, January 4, 1936, 5. 112 One clear indication of this is that the untouchable associations in Singapore or Adi Dravida Sangams that were registered were almost exclusively named after Tamil speaking regions in South India. Mani, “Changing Caste-Structure,” 213-4.

! 185! been written about two founders of the TRA, G. Sarangapany and A.C. Suppiah.113 An unpublished thesis by Vasandakumari Nair was written about the Tamil Reform Association in the 1970s, with the benefit of access to association records that no longer exist.114 It focuses directly on the TRA and provides a comprehensive account of its organisational structure, detailing the Association’s various social activities, branches and social strategies. Without rehearsing these materials here, I will provide a brief overview of the association and focus on its relationships with the Adi Dravida community as well as the Tamil labouring community in general.

The non-Brahmin movement, which had been gaining momentum in India after the first decade of the 20th century, produced a newfound popular confidence in Tamil culture and language. By 1925, E.V. Ramasamy Naicker had left the Indian National Congress and began the Self-Respect Movement with a large focus on broad social mobilisation from below. Naicker’s social programme focused largely on ideological education at the grassroots level and on harnessing the agency and participation of the individuals that the movement sought to uplift. A primary focus of Periyar’s platform was the eradication of caste distinctions and the upliftment of untouchables, so much so that when carrying a report on Periyar’s first visit to Singapore, the Straits Times labeled him “the Untouchables’ Champion.”115

Periyar and his Self Respect Movement influenced many Tamil-educated middle class migrants, including G. Sarangapany, A.C. Suppiah, O. Ramasamy Nadar and K. Ramalinga Thevar, who eventually set up the Tamil Reform Association in Singapore in 1932. Prior to the formation of the TRA, followers of Periyar had already begun promoting Dravidian ideology in Malaya. Soon after arriving in Singapore, G. Sarangapany began to import the reformist ideas that were developing in the Tamil- speaking regions of the Madras Presidency. Sarangapany imported Naicker’s publications and distributed them in Singapore. By 1929, Sarangapany had started two publications, Munnetram (Progress) and Seerthirutham (Reform), which

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 113 S/o Palaiyan, “Biography of A.C. Suppiah”; Elias, Thamizhavel Sarangapany. 114 Nair, “Tamils Reform Association.” 115 “Indian Reformer Arrives: Untouchables’ Champion in Singapore,” Straits Times, December 26, 1929, 14.

! 186! expounded the values of the Dravidian movement and aimed at encouraging the uplift of the Tamil community.116

Whereas The Nesan was pro-Indian National Congress and pro-Gandhian, stressing social reform while maintaining a degree of Hindu conservatism or at least accommodating such views, its editors emphasized the importance of Tamil Hindu identity as a subset of a larger plural pan-Indian identity. In contrast, Sarangapany and his followers and colleagues stressed a pan-Tamil identity based not on religion but on the Tamil language, and a selective interpretation of Tamil culture that stressed an inherent rationalism and compatibility with modernity and European modes of thinking. This aspect of Dravidian ideology was in part a response to the criticisms and affirmations of earlier colonial ethnography and Orientalist depictions of India. Concerns about public perceptions of the Indian community and attempts by Dravidianists to reform religious practices continued to be informed by western critiques during this period. Reformers such as Sarangapany launched scathing attacks on ‘superstition’ and the excesses of tradition using the prevailing discourse of the movement. Binaries - North/South, Aryan/Dravidian, and Brahmin/non-Brahmin - came to infer negative and positive cultural attributes, such as backwardness/modernity. Piecing this together was a historical narrative about the victimization of the Tamil people and the erosion of Tamil culture by Brahmins from the Aryan north. In Tamil Nadu, this narrative provided an ideological basis for non- Brahmin Tamils to first construct a platform against Brahmin political and social hegemony in the region, which later on served as a basis for creating mass support against the pro-Hindi policies of the Indian Congress Party in the 1930s and 1960s.117 Sarangapany’s Tamil Murasu also began vigorously promoting E.V Ramasamy Naicker during the 1930s, and setting him up as an alternative figure of leadership to Gandhi. The Tamil Murasu not only published lengthy transcripts of Periyar’s speeches but also encouraged all Tamils to celebrate his birthday in much the same way that Gandhi’s birthday was celebrated in India and Malaya.118

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 116 Sathisan, “Speaking for the Diaspora,” 76. 117 For a more detailed examination of the development and evolution of Dravidian ideology in Tamil Nadu and the unique social circumstances which shaped it, refer to M. S. S. Pandian, “Notes on the Transformation of ‘Dravidian’ Ideology: Tamilnadu, c. 1900-1940,” Social Scientist 22, no.5/6 (1994): 84-104. 118 “Periyar’s birthday celebrated in Malacca,” Tamil Murasu, October 2, 1940, 6.

! 187! During the pre-war period, the TRA arguably achieved greater success in establishing links within some sections of the labouring community through its social programmes. Apart from running a library, setting aside financial contributions for the needy and origanising education and outreach programmes, the TRA was involved in a wide range of hands-on activities aimed at improving the self-esteem of the labouring community.119 Interviews reveal that on paydays, TRA members together with the family relations of labourers would picket toddy shops to prevent labourers with from spending their monthly salaries on alcohol. TRA members set their sights on the Chinese coffee shop owners in the Indian enclave of Serangoon Road who, under the pressure of upper caste Hindus, discriminated against untouchables. TRA members visited all the coffee shops in the area and threatened legal action against owners who continued such discriminatory practices. They also visited labour lines and taught labourers, who had previously used their thumbprint to collect their monthly salaries, how to sign their names. These highly visible activities brought the organisation close to sections of the labouring community and enhanced the prestige of Dravidian leaders.

Tamil reformers also realised that messages aimed at changing social attitudes needed to be communicated in the Tamil language, and in a manner that was consistent with Tamil culture in order to reach out to the labouring community that was largely composed of Tamil speakers. Although the Indian Association used the Tamil language to convey its messages in leaflets and even published a Tamil language version of its newspaper, it was the Tamil reform movement that emerged later that began to use the Tamil language itself as a mobilising cultural symbol. The emphasis on Tamil as a cultural symbol established a pedigree for the Tamil-educated who were previously excluded from the leadership of Indian social movements. This facilitated the agency and participation of Tamil-educated middle class and working class leaders, who began to take ownership of grassroots efforts aimed at social reform, thereby reducing the reliance on non-Tamil Indian elites. The use of Tamil as a cultural symbol within Dravidian discourse was attractive to middle class Tamil- educated migrants who had been portrayed pejoratively in colonial society vis-à-vis other Indians from other ethnic groups. The Dravidian narrative and pan-Tamilianism

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 119 V. Thamizhmaraiyan and Thyagarajan Panghanathan, interview by author, December 12, 2010.

! 188! better equipped Tamils in Singapore with the imaginative resources to construct new identities that were more favourable to social mobility within the Indian community.

Through its newspaper, the Tamil Murasu, and through plays organised by its reformist theatre branch, the TRA began to emerge as an important source of Tamil culture in Singapore. However many amongst the non–untouchable Tamil Hindu community initially only appreciated the promotion of the Tamil language by the TRA and the less radical aspects of its social agenda. Ganapathi Pillai recalls that the Tamil public in Malaya was selective about their support for Periyar’s social ideas during the pre-war period and it was only a newer generation of younger migrants who arrived after the war that more fully embraced Dravidian ideology once Indian nationalist sentiment waned after Indian independence.120

During the early years of the 1930s, the TRA received a mixed reception from the Tamil community; while conservative Hindus remained hostile, a large section remained ambivalent and aloof because of the perception that the TRA was anti- Hindu. Due to Periyar’s fiery rhetoric against religious practices, Tamil reformers were perceived to be promoting a militant form of atheism, although the organisation’s membership included individuals from various religious backgrounds as well as atheists such as A.C Suppiah.121 This was an image that later Dravidian organisations in Singapore, including the SDMK, would attempt to counter by volunteering their uniformed corps for crowd control during Hindu religious festivals like .122 Despite the fact that the TRA in Singapore were not anti-Hindu, the association adopted a confrontational attitude towards Hindu practices which it deemed backward and regressive, attempting to enact bans on fire-walking during the festival of Timiti and the carrying of kavadis (a structure carried by devotees that often includes spikes that are pierced through an individual’s skin) during Thaipusam. The radical nature of the TRA’s platforms lessened their appeal amongst Tamils. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 120 Shinji, Interview Documents, 72. 121 Mrs. D. Jawharilal, interview by author, January 8, 2012; S/o Palaiyan, “Biography of A. C. Suppiah,” 11. Before the war, the British authorities also avoided dealing with the TRA and did not recognise their claim to represent the Tamil community. They considered the TRA an atheist organisation and feared that giving the association recognition would anger Tamil Hindus. Kumar S/O Palaiyan, “A Biography,” 42; “Is it Atheistic to Work for the Progress of Tamils? Ipoh Responds to Criticisms Against the Tamil leader,” Tamil Murasu, October 4, 1940, 10. 122 This information was disclosed to the author by a former member of the SDMK. M.P Samy, interview by author, December 18, 2011.

! 189!

Vasandakumari Nair argues that the Tamil community initially exhibited “a reluctance borne of conservatism in responding to the association’s radical social and religious reforms.”123 She argues that the illiterate masses were passive with regard to reform and tended be influenced by the upper castes who supported them in plantations and in municipal employment. 124 Ultimately, the subtleties of the ideological battles between Congress-inspired Indian nationalists and Dravidian nationalists had no relevance for the vast majority of Tamil labourers. Widespread illiteracy was a barrier to participation in the public sphere created by print communities. The antipathy of Tamil leaders towards the Congress Party could not change the fact that the Congress was at the forefront of the Independence Movement in India and thus received widespread support in Malaya amongst many overseas Tamils. Indian nationalism and its leaders, including Gandhi, remained very popular amongst Tamils in Malaya, consistent with sentiments in Madras during the 1930s. A British intelligence document detailing the circulation of popular papers in the Madras Presidency reveals that Indian nationalist newspapers like Swadesamitran and Jaya Bharati had circulations that were far larger than Periyar’s Kudi Arasu in 1937, although when using these figures the unequal distribution of literacy along caste lines, particularly amongst Tamil Brahmins who opposed Dravidian ideology must also be taken into account.125

Tamils in Singapore attended the activities and adopted the symbols of both groups that were pro-Congress and those that supported Dravidian leaders in India. They attended Dravidian reformist drama performances while hanging portraits of Gandhi on the walls of their homes, labour lines and dormitories. Dravidian interpretations of Tamil identity were not presented through nuanced arguments, but were introduced gradually through the propagation of certain values and symbols that were packaged in cultural activities, dramas and events. Most Tamil labourers however did not actively internalise Dravidian ideology during this period, particularly with regards to

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 123 Nair, “Tamils Reform Association,” 42. 124 S/o Palaiyan, “Biography of A.C. Suppiah,” 42. 125 The Swadesamitran and Jaya Bharati had circulations of 16,600 and 10,000 respectively, in contrast to the Kudi Arasu, which has a circulation of 4000 in 1937. Government of India, Bureau of Public Information, Guide to Prominent English and Vernacular Newspapers and Periodicals published in British India and Indian States, corrected up to Dec 1937, Government of India, Bureau of Public Information (Delhi, Government of India Press, , May 1944), pp. 18-9, BL- V/27/960/9, BL.

! 190! caste reform, despite being the beneficiaries of varying forms of social support from the TRA.

Despite an initial ambivalence and wariness from the Hindu Tamil majority in Singapore, the TRA was dependent on a number of social groups and organisations that identified with various aspects of Dravidian ideology for support. These included the Penang Hindu Mahajana Sangam (that invited Periyar to Malaya in 1929); members of the Tamil-educated middle class; Tamil newspaper vendors; Tamil Muslims (who felt alienated by articulations of Tamil identity that focused on Hinduism); low caste organisations like the Ahampadiyar Mahajana Sangam and various Maruthuvar Sangams to which low-caste Tamil barbers belonged. A crucial source of support also came from the Adi Dravida community.

Many of the Tamil reformist leaders in Singapore who were involved in promoting Dravidian ideology were relatively wealthy. Many were property owners, and belonged to relatively higher Tamil castes like the Vellalar. However, unlike the English-educated elite in the Indian Association, despite their relative privilege, they managed to form much closer grassroots links within the working class Adi Dravida community compared with English-educated Indian elites. The TRA proved to be a far more inclusive organisation with personal relationships formed between its leadership and Adi Dravida Sangams.

Due to the active courting of the Adi Dravidas by Tamil reformers, they were amongst the first within the community to rally behind the Tamil Reform Movement and amongst the first to internalise and promote Dravidian ideology during the 1920s and 1930s. This was evident during the preference for the designation “Tamil” taken by a large section of the Adi Dravida community during the Third Annual All-Malaya Adi Dravida Conference. This initial cooperative relationship and the reliance of the Tamil Reform Association on Adi Dravida Sangams for the building up of its critical mass of supporters had an impact on its social objectives in Malaya, where the tackling of caste prejudice remained one of its central ambitions.

The initial organisational links also shaped the cooperative relationship between the Adi Dravidas and Tamil reformers in the post-war period. During this time Adi

! 191! Dravidas began to actively adopt a “Dravidian Tamil” ethnic identity and the Tamil Reform movement and Adi Dravida Sangams began to merge. Several Adi Dravida Sangams were officially incorporated into Sarangapany’s Tamil Reform Council in 1952, where they subsequently began changing the names of their organisations, dropping the “Adi Dravida” designation and utilising “Tamil” and “Dravidian” instead. Many Adi Dravidas also drifted away from other Adi Dravida Sangams and joined the newer Singapore Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. M. Subramaniam, a founding member and a former branch secretary of the SDMK in the 1950s, recalled that Adi Dravidas working in the city council as road sweepers and refuse and night soil collectors flocked to the both the SDMK and Singapore Dravida Kazhagam (SDK) in Singapore in the 1950s.126 According to Subramaniam, both organisations received the strongest support from the Adi Dravida community, especially amongst migrants who had been in Singapore for many years.127

By 1940, Dravidian reformers in Singapore had begun to gradually gain more support from the Tamil population for its articulation of Dravidian Tamil ethnic identity. The Adi Dravida community was amongst other groups that were at the forefront of accepting and promoting an ethnic Tamil identity based solely on language. During this period the Tamil Murasu began carrying articles, speeches and opinion pieces that promoted the idea of a separate state for Tamils, furthering the notion that Tamils should consider themselves a people entirely separate from other Indians. The publication of such articles signals their endorsement by leaders, including Sarangapany, whose employees remember exercising strict editorial control over the content in his newspapers.128 Forthright titles declared ‘Those who call themselves “Indians” have not realized Tamil values’; and ‘We don’t need the favours of the North Indians: Why we are saying that Tamilnad should be separate.’129 Yet another appealed to ancient history to cement the idea of a disunited India: ‘Can the India that was ruled by 56 kings be one Nation: The Tamil nation that did not bow before Akbar

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 126 M. Subramaniam, interview by author, January 24, 2012. 127 Ibid. 128 M.P. Samy, interview by author, December 18, 2011. 129 “Tamil Language and Tamil society: Those who call themselves “Indians” have not realised Tamil values,” Tamil Murasu, April 24, 1940, 9. “We Don’t Need the Favours of the North Indians: Why Are We Saying That Tamil Nadu Should Be Separate? Periyar’s views,” Tamil Murasu, May 11, 1940, 1.

! 192! and Asoka.’130 This escalating promotion of Tamil separateness in Singapore and Malaya was entirely dependent on political developments in India. It was marked by the attempt to re-align the imagined homeland of the Tamil immigrant with the territorial region that Dravidian politicians had been marked out for future political sovereignty.

A Broadening World View

The broadening worldview of Tamil migrants and the growth of transnational political solidarities in the 1920s and 1930s, represented a serious challenge to the dominance of translocal caste identities and discursively problematised the practice of untouchability in Singapore. From this period untouchable identities in Singapore were closely tied to the articulation of identity in the wider Indian community. The outbreak of war and the onset of Japanese military occupation in Singapore presented a radical rupture in the growth and spread of Dravidian identity and was a period in which a specific vision of pan-Indianism became a totalizing discourse in Malaya. The drastic impact of this period on the untouchable and wider Indian communities will be the subject of the next chapter.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 130 “Can the India That Was Ruled by 56 Kings Be One Nation: The Tamil Nation That Did Not Bow Before Akbar and Asoka,” Tamil Murasu, April 30, 1940, 5.

! 193! Chapter Five

Coercion and Consent: Racialised Subjectivities and the Performance “Indianness” in Malaya during the Japanese Occupation

The Japanese occupation of Malaya during the Second World War represented a radical and disruptive intervention into the cultural and identity politics of the Indian community in Malaya. During the occupation, the special status granted to the Indian community as a result of Japanese collaboration with the Indian National Army and the Indian Independence League, as well as the arrival and leadership of Subhas Chandra Bose, had a major impact on the ways in which Indian identity was negotiated. In a social climate marked by fear and the consistent threat of violence, many Indians demonstrated their racial affiliation in performative ways that guaranteed that their special status would be recognised. Pressure to publicly conform to the politics and ideology of the Indian Independence League (IIL) and Indian National Army (INA) also entailed the suppression of sub-ethnic differences, which enhanced the public acceptance of a unifying pan-Indian identity.

Various forms of sub-ethnic assertion that had been gaining ground before the war were abruptly suspended under what became a near-totalizing institutional framework for the aggressive promotion of a revolutionary anti-British pan-Indian identity. Under the Japanese occupation, all communal associations were banned and Dravidian Tamil ethnic identities were suppressed, as were notions of a separate untouchable identity for Adi Dravida migrants.1 This had serious implications for the way the community expressed its identity during this period. Prior to the occupation, the untouchable Tamil community had been increasingly identifying with Dravidian Tamil ethnic identity as a means of asserting itself against caste prejudice. During the occupation they were, like the rest of the Indian community, compelled to identify themselves as “Indians” who supported armed struggle against the British Empire.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 Communal associations were defined as any linguistic, regional or sub-ethnic organisations and associations that went beyond official racial categories.

! 194! While the leaders of sub-ethnic associations were sidelined, Indian notables in Malaya who supported the Congress-led independence movement in India prior to the occupation rose to prominence when they were granted leadership positions within institutions like the Indian Independence League and later, Subash Chandra Bose’s Government of Free India. Shorn of organisational support, press links and even basic communication with India, the Indian diaspora in Malaya developed its identity on a separate and more radical trajectory for four years, during which time the entire Indian community was mobilised in various ways to contribute to the war effort in what for many was an uneasy alliance with the Japanese, built upon asymmetrical relations of power and dependency.2

Untouchables and a New Pan-Indianism

To understand the history of the untouchable community in Singapore during this period, it is essential to take a broad view of the impact of occupation on the entire Indian community, particularly with regard to its identity formulation. Indian identities during this period underwent a disruptive process of normative homogenisation within narrow parameters and the experience of racial categorisation was a collective and shared experience for all within the community. Coercive structures were put into place to discipline Indians into accepting, internalising and performing a narrowly defined “Indian identity”, that was on the surface radically egalitarian and transcended caste, religion, language and ethnicity. The occupation represented an extraordinary period when authoritarian coercive strategies were employed to advance and legitimise certain liberal and progressive social changes in a more effective manner than was previously possible due to widespread conservatism. It was during this period, for instance, that traditional gender roles were challenged and women were allowed to enlist as soldiers into special regiments of the Indian

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 2 Subash Chandra Bose referred to this as the “total mobilisation” of manpower and resources of the Malayan Indian community “against the enemy.” “Opening of Women’s Training Camp,” Young India, October 24, 2603(1943), 9. Bose also stated that “every Indian home” had to consider itself an office of the Indian Independence League and that “no artificial distinction” would exist between the two. “Netaji’s Call for Total Mobilisation,” Young India, July 25, 2603(1943), 3. British intelligence officers stationed in India admitted that they had very poor knowledge of what was going on in Malaya during the occupation, indicating the extent to which communication was severed between India and Malaya during the period. Richard B. Corridon, Acc. No. 000131, Reel: 1, Oral History Centre, NAS.

! 195! National Army.3 Parents were encouraged to let their young daughters enlist in uniformed youth corps, where they received physical education and weapons training. The rights of women were often acknowledged in speeches given by Bose, as well as in IIL propaganda. In one editorial written by Bose, addressed to Indian women, he made a case against conservative attitudes by making reference to female combatants in Indian history:

Sisters, we had one time conservative men amongst us who thought that women had nothing to do with the national struggle, and that it was entirely a man’s affair. I hope that there are no such men in our midst today… If there is anyone either here or elsewhere who thinks that it is an unwomanly act to shoulder a rifle, I would ask him or her to turn to the pages of our History.4

Caste issues and caste identities were also submerged during this period, and exhibitions of caste prejudice received harsh sanction. For untouchables who joined the INA, the period marked a time of increased social status and esteem in the eyes of the wider community, which had repercussions in the post-war period.

Yet despite the prevailing discourse of Indian unity and total mobilisation, the outcome of the war was not the same for all segments of Indian society. Working class Tamil labourers, including the vast majority of untouchable municipal and plantation workers, were particularly vulnerable not only to the privations of war, but also to Japanese violence. Many were forced to labour on the -Burma railway. Faced with deteriorating conditions, many on plantations also supported the Malayan Peoples’ Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), a guerrilla group whose members would later form the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM); in the post-war period, they turned against the British after being declared illegal and were forced underground. The period therefore was a mixed experience for untouchable Tamils, who were exposed to, and enjoyed the benefits of, the Indian National Army’s ideological !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 3 The role of Indian women in the INA deserves a much deeper and nuanced analysis, which goes beyond the scope of this thesis. It is important to note for instance that female Indian soldiers were largely relegated to support roles. Despite this, female enlistment amongst the Indian community and the supporting discourse that emerged represented a radical departure from previous cultural norms. See, for example, Carol Hills and Daniel C. Silverman, “Nationalism and Feminism in Late Colonial India: The Regiment,” Modern Asian Studies 27, no.4 (October 1993): 741-60. 4 “Women Join Freedom War,” Young India, July 18, 2603(1943), 8.

! 196! egalitarianism, but who were simultaneously exposed to Japanese violence without support from community leaders, who remained silent about the treatment of Indian labourers to preserve good relations with the Japanese.

After the war, the pan-Indian narrative of identity was largely discarded by Tamils in Singapore, as well as by untouchables in the Tamil community, and replaced by a Dravidian Tamil ethnic identity. This dynamic suggests the tenuous nature of this narrative and of its dependence on structures of coercion for its perpetuation. This chapter explores the ways that identity was mediated by the experience of occupation, as well as paying attention to the actual lived experiences of untouchable labourers and other Indians. This will facilitate a better understanding of the impact of this period on ethnic subjectivities and will better frame post-war developments within a broader historical context.

Indian Unity: Memorialising the Independence Movement in Occupied Malaya

Many writers and prominent academics regard the Japanese Occupation as being the high water mark of pan-Indian unity in Malaya.5 This unity is often attributed to the ability of Subhas Chandra Bose to inspire patriotism and to bring the strength of his personality, political capital and social prestige to “cut across religious, linguistic, regional and gender divisions and give his followers an inclusive sense of Indianness.”6 In Singapore, recent historical interest in Bose and the independence movement in Malaya has been closely associated with diplomatic efforts by the Singapore Government to revisit the close historical links between India and Singapore as part of an effort to establish stronger bilateral ties and to secure greater

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 5 Sinnapah Arasaratnam, “Malaysian Indians: The Formation of Incipient Society,” in Sandhu and Mani, Indian Communities, 781. 6 K. Kesavapany, “Bose and the Linked Histories of Singapore and India,” in Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Singapore Saga, ed. N. Sengupta (Singapore: Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2009-2010), 5. Sugata Bose contends that while Bose’s movement to movement to free India encountered difficulties reconciling the class differences within the Malayan Indian community, it nevertheless was remarkably successful in bridging the differences of religious and linguistic communities.” Sugata Bose, A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (London: Harvard University Press, 2006), 179.

! 197! regional participation from India.7 Previous studies of the period have not only tended to focus on the unity that was achieved by the Indian community but has also emphasised the voluntary and public-spirited nature of that unity.8 However I wish to examine a different perspective, interrogating the nature of pan-Indian unity and identity during the occupation, particularly focusing on the role of violence, coercion, fear and self-censorship and on the suppression of sub-ethnic identities.

While many oral history accounts suggest that many individuals were genuinely inspired by the Indian nationalist cause and made considerable contributions or underwent great hardships voluntarily, this does not adequately represent the full spectrum of Malayan Indian experience during this period. Many oral history accounts also suggest that fear of Japanese violence, or the desire to access special rations and benefits was for many a strong motivating factor that encouraged them to publically support the INA, IIL and the Provisional Government of Free India. Dr. Kanichat Raghava Menon, the secretary of the Indian Independence League, claimed that many Indians did not actually believe that an armed offensive against the British in India had any hope of success and that many joined the INA “to save their skin.”9 In an interview Menon contemplated what he felt was the choice facing Indians at the time:

So which is better, to get into a military uniform for India’s Independence or to get beaten to death by the Japanese militia? That was the question…And well you march to India.10

Even the public gatherings and rallies that were attended by thousands at a time - often portrayed as a powerful symbol of Indian unity - were not devoid of coercive elements. By 1944, S.C. Alagappan, the Minister of State for the Provisional

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 7 George Yeo, Singapore’s former Foreign Minister recently suggested restoring an INA memorial that was destroyed in 1945, when the British regained control of Singapore after the surrender of the Japanese. “Padma for Singapore Ex-Minister with Nalanda Connect,” Yahoo News Singapore, January 25, 2012, accessed March 16, 2012, http://sg.news.yahoo.com/padma-singapore-ex-minister-nalanda- connect-115229245.html. 8 ‘The Man Who Roused a Community’ Straits Times, (1 Aug. 2011), accessed August 1, 2011, www.straitstimes.com, http://www.straitstimes.com/Insight/Story/STIStory_690757.html. 9 Kanichat Raghava Menon, Acc. No. 000025, Reel: 7, Oral History Centre, NAS. 10 Ibid. Dr. Menon also stated during an interview that the “outward” support the Indian community gave to the IIL did not correspond to their true beliefs. Kanichat Raghava Menon, Acc. No. 000025, Reel: 5, Oral History Centre, NAS.

! 198! Government of Free India, issued a reminder to Indians that their attendance at such events was not only strictly compulsory, but also that they had to refrain from walking and talking during speeches, even if they did not understand the language being spoken. 11 Interviewees indicate that many non-English and non-Hindustani speakers who attended these rallies did not understand the proceedings, casting doubt on accounts that describe the effects of rousing oratory on enthusiastic crowds. This perspective is underrepresented in historical studies of the period, necessitating a fresh understanding of the forces that shaped Indian unity during the occupation.

Diversity and Divisions within Malaya’s Indian Community

The unity that was achieved during the period of occupation was indeed unprecedented and there was little indication that Indian society in Malaya was on a path to achieving this before the British surrender.12 As described in earlier chapters, Indian society in Malaya prior to the war was very heterogeneous with most linguistic and religious groups in India represented amongst the population. Apart from a relatively small group of English-educated Indian elites who organised themselves within the Central Indian Association of Malaya, there was a limited institutional framework for pan-Indian unity across existing ethno-linguistic and class divisions. The 800,000 or so Indians who resided in Malaya came from many regions of the subcontinent, although working class Tamils constituted a substantial majority.13 Indian society in Malaya was also divided by caste and class and those who were educated were divided between those educated in English and those educated in vernacular languages. Even within the English educated Indian elite, deep cleavages had emerged between the “local-born” or “straits-born” and those that had been born !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 11 S.C. Alagappan, “Indians urged to Observe Events of National Importance Strictly According to Instructions Issued,” , March 28, 2604(1944), 2. 12 Throughout the 1930s, members of the various Indian Associations in Malaya commented on the lack of Indian unity that existed in Malaya. They criticised the preponderance of other Indian organisations that were more narrowly communal and cited them as evidence for a lack of over-arching unity. Many references were also made in newspapers to the lack of Indian unity as a primary reason for the political disempowerment of the Indians in Malaya. “Indians Mass Meeting of Protest, Strong Resentment of Remarks in Jubilee Souvenir: Appeal to Government,” Straits Times, May 29, 1935, 13; Stenson, Class, Race and Colonialism 54; “The Indian Agent’s Report,” The Indian, December 28, 1935, 15. 13 Bose, Hundred Horizons, 175; Arasaratnam, Indians in Malaysia, 126,129; Stenson, Class, Race and Colonialism, 54.

! 199! in India, the former seeing itself as being culturally distinct from India-born immigrants and their children. Straits-born Indians were more likely to view Malaya as their home, and were largely unconcerned with the political situation in India during the 1930s and early 1940s. R.B Krishnan, the editor of The Indian, an English- language newspaper published in Singapore, described the Straits-born Indian as having “no interest” in India and being “ignorant of the glorious cultural heritage of India and of her ancient spiritual greatness.”14

As a result of this diversity, views on the political situation in India prior to the war varied considerably across various groups and were closely related to differing conceptions of ethnic identity. Individuals who arrived from India and who maintained close cultural and kinship ties with the subcontinent tended to be far more politically involved in Indian affairs, although any over-arching unity was limited. Some groups remained loyal to the existing government, and favoured continued British rule. Amongst those that supported the push for Indian independence, not every group favoured a hasty British withdrawal. There was no evidence prior to the occupation that any significant Indian group supported armed revolutionary action against the British.15 Consistent with the situation in India, groups in Malaya also maintained transnational political linkages with a range of Indian parties and movements. Some, like the Indian National Congress, promoted a political and cultural conception of pan-Indian identity that accommodated the diversity found within the territorial boundaries marked out for the future Indian state. Other parties including the Tamil nationalist Justice Party (later renamed the Dravida Kazhagam or Dravidian Organisation) and Self Respect Movement, which advanced sectarian agendas that were couched in the language and logic of eventual secession from the greater Indian body politic. Just prior to the war, untouchable Tamils were gravitating towards Dravidian ideology in greater numbers and began to support the Tamil Reform Association, looking to it for leadership.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 14 Krishnan, Indians in Malaya, 27. 15 Shirts with “ collars” were popular amongst Indian-born Indians in Singapore in the 1930s, indicating that Indian revolutionaries were held in good regard, although their popularity did not extend to any active support for ongoing violent revolutionary actions against the British. Sellapan Ramanathan, interview by author, February 16, 2011. In any case, Kama Maclean argues that even in north India, Bhagat Singh’s politics were imperfectly understood in the 1930s. Kama Maclean “The Portrait’s Journey: The Image, Social Communication and Martyr-Making in Colonial India,” The Journal of Asian Studies 70, no.4 (2011): 1056-7, 1076-8.

! 200!

What little unity did exist amongst the Indians in Malaya was rapidly fracturing by 1941. Malayan-born Indian elites held a grudging sense that they had lost control of the Indian Associations in Malaya to the India-born, who were attempting to steer the community into much greater participation in the anti-colonial politics of the Congress movement. As a result, many disgruntled members wanted to split existing pan-Indian associations to reflect their exclusive interest in Malayan society and their desire to distance themselves from Indian politics. G. Sarangapany, a proponent of Dravidian ideology and a founder of the Tamil Reform Association in Singapore, had also proposed the setting up of an All-Malaya Tamils’ Association (AMTA) to rival the CIAM and erode its influence by capitalizing on the numerical superiority of the Tamil population. Despite protests from many Indians, who saw it as a sectarian organisation promoting communal divisions, the AMTA was started in 1941.16 At its opening ceremony, the association’s first elected president, O. Ramasamy Nadar, declared that Indians, who he identified as a different group from the Tamils, “had no right whatsoever to represent them or to take a share in any origanisation on their behalf.”17 Malayan press reports indicate that European planters viewed the new organisation in a positive light and were willing to lend support to it. The Straits Times Planting Correspondent stated in an editorial that the association should “be welcomed by the planting community as a step in the right direction.”18 Planters had by that stage a largely acrimonious relationship with both the CIAM and Indian associations, which were implicated by the press in worker strikes and which also supported the Indian Government’s ban on labour migration. The AMTA had in contrast criticised the ban, accusing its supporters of cynically trying to reduce the Tamil population in Malaya, and arguing that it was implemented without consultation with labourers, many of whom were left stranded in India after not being informed that they would not be able to return to Malaya to work after what they assumed would be short visits home. Had the occupation not occurred, it is likely that the AMTA, which was seen by planters as more moderate and less willing to politicise labour rights issues, would have received their support and subsequent

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 16 “Protest Against New Tamil Association,” Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, May 2, 1941, 9. 17 “Growth of Trade Unionism Among Estate Labourers, Real Leadership Required: New Association Formed,” Straits Times, April 26, 1941, 14. 18 Ibid.

! 201! recognition from the government, eroding the influence of other Indian elites in the CIAM.

Given the diversity of the Indian community before the occupation, particularly the differing political opinions that existed about British rule and the preferred composition of the future Indian state, the growth and propagation of a pan-Indian identity and unity cannot be singularly attributed to the power of revolutionary nationalist ideology.19 The pressures imposed upon the Indian community that shaped identity narratives were closely related to the larger Japanese attempt to racialise Asian subjectivities as well as define and classify racial collectives in terms that supported the Japanese war effort. They were also the result of shifting power dynamics within the Indian community that were brought about by the war.

Managing Pluralism: The Japanese Encounter with Malayan Society

When the Japanese invasion of Malaya concluded with the British capitulation in Singapore during the February of 1942, Japanese military and civilian organisations began focusing their attention on governing the Malayan Peninsula and Singapore, later renamed Syonan-to. This was the first time that Japanese bureaucrats and military personnel found themselves in charge of administering a conquered territory that was composed of a highly diverse and heterogeneous population. Although systems of governmentality did emerge to organise and manage relations with the ethnic, religious and racially plural civilian population in the region, there seems little evidence to suggest that there was a detailed over-arching strategy in place prior to the invasion for managing Malaya’s plurality.20

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 19 Prior to the Japanese invasion, revolutionary Indian nationalism had no widespread support in Malaya. Fujiwara Iwaichi, F.Kikan: Japanese Army Intelligence Operations in Southeast Asia during World War II (Hong Kong: Heinemann Asia, 1983), 7. 20 The Japanese General Staff released a document that outlined some basic principles for administering conquered territories in Southeast Asia. This document, the Draft Outline of the Administrative Principles for the Occupied Regions in the Operations of the Southern Area, only dealt with ethnicity and culture very briefly, instructing officers to respect established local organisations and customs and to refrain from hasty statements about the future status of sovereignty. Akashi Yoji and Yoshimura Mako, eds., New Perspectives on the Japanese Occupation in Malaya and Singapore, 1941-1945 (Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2008), 3. The Japanese had special research units that began gathering information about the various ‘races’ in conquered territories but

! 202!

Japanese rule was officially clothed in the ideological vestments of pan-Asian equality, unity and fraternity that served as a legitimising discourse for imperial expansion. Japanese propaganda portrayed the advance as an opportunity for Asian populations to liberate themselves from the yoke of European colonialism.21 An article in the Young India periodical produced under the auspices of the Japanese propaganda department in Singapore in 1943 declared that Japan, being “guided by the lofty ideal of Hakko Ichiu, or Universal Brotherhood…could not tolerate the ruthlessness of those (European) powers in their efforts to perpetually enslave the East”, and remained “the logical defender and redeemer of Asia.”22 In practice, Japanese rule was largely characterised by manifestations of ethnic chauvinism, and the relationships between the Japanese and Southeast Asian subject populations mirrored colonial structures of power.23

The non-Japanese body in Malaya became the subject of a disciplining gaze that was consciously and conspicuously transformative. Under the official governing philosophy of Colonel Watanabe Wataru, the second Chief of General Affairs stationed in Singapore, non-Japanese Asians were seen to be in need of corrective betterment and misogi (spiritual cleansing) from the corrupting influence of British rule. This entailed exposure to austerity, discipline and hardship.24 Japanese officers regarded Japanese culture as superior and attempts to transform Asians in conquered territory often assumed some of the characteristics of a civilising mission. During the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! these units were only consulted for policy matters in Malaya from 1944 onward. Pandarapillai s/o Vallupillai, Acc. No. 000339, Reel: 4, Oral History Centre, NAS; Yoji and Mako, New Perspectives, 12-13. 21 The museum complex within the Yasukuni Shrine compound in Tokyo today contains exhibits that reinforce the image of the Japanese military as an emancipatory force and a facilitating factor in post- war Asian nationalism and anti-colonialism. Singapore and Malaysia are listed amongst several other contemporary Asian nations whose drive towards independence was said to have been inspired by Japan and “kindled under Japanese Occupation.” Post-War Independence Movements, (wall-panel in the Yasukuni Shrine museum, on display during November 2010). 22 “Greater E. Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” Young India: Organ of the Indian Youth Movement in East Asia 1, no. 20, July 18, 2603(1943), 7. Between 1919 and 1932, Gandhi published a popular weekly English periodical that was also named Young India. The use of the same publication name may have been the result of a conscious attempt to create the appearance of a connection between the independence movement in India and the armed initiative in Southeast Asia. 23 Nakahara Michiko argues that part of the reason that Asian labourers working on the Thailand- Burma Railway suffered such deplorable conditions was that they were subject to racial prejudice from the Japanese. Nakahara Michiko, “Malayan Labor on the Thailand-Burma Railway,” in Asian Labour in the Wartime Japanese Empire, ed. Paul H. Krastoska (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2006), 264. 24 Yoji and Mako, New Perspectives, 34.

! 203! occupation, the civilian population was subjected to various forms of coercion that aimed at altering their outward behaviour, physical comportment and in some cases even clothing. According to oral history accounts, not only did a failure to bow to Japanese sentries or to exhibit deferential behaviour result in retributive slapping, punching or kicking, but during the early years of the occupation such treatment was sometimes meted out to those who failed to tuck in or button up their shirts, those walked with their hands in their pockets or otherwise failed to maintain a ‘neat’ appearance or who failed to keep their dwellings hygienic and “presentable.”25

Racial Classification Under Occupation

The social scripts that evolved as a result of these encounters not only governed many aspects of everyday behaviour but also regulated the expression and understanding of self-identity. Individuals quickly realised that all their interactions with the Japanese were framed by their constituted status as racialised subjects in a new empire. The Japanese administration retained certain structural elements of British colonial rule, including the pre-existing racial divisions that had served as a cornerstone of British rule in the region. No attempt was made to alter or reinvent these racial classifications, and communities were generally divided into “Chinese”, “Malay”, “Indian” or “European/Eurasian”. Each “racial” community was treated according to its relation to the Japanese war effort, its perceived loyalty to the British Empire, and, in the case of non-Malays, the group’s diasporic links to geographically defined and externally located ‘national’ communities. 26 The value assigned to these national communities was predicated on a geo-strategic assessment of their respective statuses as friendly, hostile or neutral entities.27

In general, non-Malay communities were treated as non-indigenous and therefore as diasporic racial collectives oriented towards external “homelands”. Little regard was paid to non-Malay ethnic identities that had evolved in a specifically Malayan context !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 25 K Kesavan s/o Damodaran, Acc. No. 000127, Reel: 5, Oral History Centre, NAS. 26 For a detailed analysis of Japanese policies towards each ethnic community in Malaya see Paul H. Kratoska, The Japanese Occupation of Malaya: 1941-1945, A Social and Economic History (St. Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1998), 92-121. 27 Ibid.

! 204! and were geographically tied to the Malayan peninsula. Mamoru Shinozaki, an official in the Japanese government in Singapore during the Occupation, recalled that senior Japanese military officials, who had served in Manchuria and China, failed to realise that cultural differences existed between Chinese-born and those who were born in China. 28 The Indian leadership during the occupation were keen to further the impression that all Indians in Malaya were oriented towards India, strategically glossing over Straits-Indian identities during this period in propaganda newspapers and speeches. An editorial in the Azad Hind, an Indian propaganda paper, for instance, declared that “the Indian settler in Malai (Malaya) seldom looked upon Malai as his home”, and that “because of the great nationalist revival in India in the past three decades, no Indian who had been in living contact with this new freedom- thirsty India could ever forget his homeland and make a home elsewhere.”29

Hybridised Malayan identities however remained during the occupation, although public manifestations of them were largely suppressed on an individual level. In an interview Sellapan Ramanathan, a future (1999-2011), remembered the first time he was made to consider his “nationality” during the occupation. A Japanese officer he was serving as a guide repeatedly asked him what his nationality was. Ramanathan initially evaded the question, only to be firmly told by the officer that his nationality was “Indian.”30 Ramanathan, who was eighteen when the Japanese first took control of Singapore, later admitted that he had until that point considered himself a local or Straits-born Indian and had taken pride in that self- designation. Ramanathan identified with other Indians in the Straits-born Indian community who, he explained, had been in Malaya for generations and had not only severed emotional and cultural ties to the subcontinent, but had negligible relations with the India-born community in Singapore. Initially at least, the lack of Japanese regard for hybridised ethnic identities such as Straits-Indian, Straits-Chinese or Peranakan, was also accompanied by official support for ethno-religious forms of proto-Malay nationalism that were racially exclusive.31 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 28 Mamoru Shinozaki, Syonan, My Story: The Japanese Occupation of Singapore (Singapore: Times Books International, 1982), 46. 29 “Free Malai is Foundation for Free India,” Azad Hind, February 15, 2604(1944), 2. 30 Sellapan Ramanathan, interview by author, February 16, 2011. 31 In contrast to principles of Pan-Asian unity that were professed by Japanese propaganda, Malay support was initially sought by playing up antagonisms between the Malays and the Chinese and by cultivating notions of Malay indigeneity and an incipient proto-nationalism in the context of land

! 205!

However, Japanese attitudes to race were not uniform, and were rather shaped by a very heterogeneous worldview that varied between different military commanders and civilian leaders, sometimes subject to the rampant factionalism inherent in the highest offices of government and in the upper echelons of the Japanese military establishment. Several Japanese organisations in Singapore were charged with managing relations with different ethnic communities, and their policies had the result of shaping and altering the cultural self-identity of many communities. This sometimes occurred as a result of a conscious attempt by the Japanese authorities to bring communities in line with Japanese interests, but also as a result of dialogical processes between the Japanese and different ethnic leaders, or as a result of the attempts by Asian populations to negotiate safe identity roles and boundaries after second-guessing the expectations of the Japanese. In this sense, the wartime gaze of the Japanese military establishment created a kind of disciplining regime whereby certain interpretations of racial identity and ideas about racial membership were enhanced. The negotiation of these safe identity roles created a mechanism for facilitating the co-option of the population; this lessened the reliance of the Japanese authorities on conspicuous violence as a tool and strategy of governance.

In the case of the Chinese, for example, the creation of the Association by Mamoru Shinozaki, the head of the Welfare Department in Singapore, created an institutional means for Chinese members to demonstrate their loyalty to Japan and belief in the pan-Asian ethos through donations and participation in public activities and events that were held in honour of the Japanese emperor or Japanese military officials. This provided the community with a safety valve, a viable alternative to the blanket identification of the Chinese as an anti-Japanese race, which helped Shinozaki provide a means of alleviating violence against the community. Some Japanese officers began to realise that excessive violence - such the Sook Ching Massacre of 1942, when thousands of Chinese males were summarily executed along Singapore’s north-eastern beaches - not only delegitimised Japanese claims about !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! rights. During the initial advance into Malaya, one propaganda leaflet proclaimed “Malays, we are your friends, and intend to drive out the Europeans who have enslaved you, (and) also kill off the Chinese who have taken the wealth from your country.” A. Wavell, Operations in Malaya, 1944 CAB/66/26/44, National Archives, UK. The Japanese made no allowances for Peranakan Chinese identity in Malaya and Peranakan Chinese were treated as part of the diasporic “Overseas Chinese” community. Dhoraisingam, Peranakan, 21.

! 206! Pan-Asian unity but also alienated the Chinese community upon which the Malayan economy was extremely dependent.32

Assessments of Indians in Malaya

Throughout the occupation, Indians in Singapore and the rest of Malaya generally received preferential treatment compared to that meted out to European, Eurasian and Chinese communities. This was primarily the result of the Japanese decision to publically demonstrate support for militant Indian nationalism in Southeast Asia and the INA’s attempt to unseat British authority in India through an armed struggle.33 The decision to commit support to the Indian independence movement in Southeast Asia was decided at a relatively late stage. Before the Second World War, the General Headquarters of the Imperial Japanese Army had no definite plan regarding India. The decision to aid the attempt by Southeast Asian Indian communities to secure Indian Independence was only decided during a meeting of the Japanese cabinet in 1941.34

Prior to this, there was no indication that the Japanese would support Indian aspirations for independence. Several leading figures within the Indian National Congress, including Gandhi and Nehru, had initially expressed conditional support for the British war effort and advocated a partial suspension of disruptive activities until the war’s conclusion.35 In June 1942, a few months after the Japanese had taken

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 32 Kratoska, The Japanese Occupation of Malaya, 93. 33 Japanese willingness to support the activities of the Indian National Army and Indian Independence League in ways that did not produce tangible short-term benefits for the Japanese war effort varied with the rotation of various Japanese military commanders and liaison officers during various phases of the war. 34 Jenarani Thangavel, “The Indian National Army and the Singapore-Malayan Indians: 1942-1945” (honours thesis, Nanyang University, 1979), 5-7. 35 By early August 1942, Gandhi was faced with what he saw as an increasingly restive Indian population and growing disagreements within the Congress. Fearing an outbreak of violence, Gandhi attempted to channel the frustrations of the population towards non-violent protest and launched the ‘Quit India’ movement on the 9th of August 1942, bringing an end to the Congress policy of freezing civil disobedience activities while Britain was at war. This prompted the arrests of the Congress leadership and the banning of the Congress movement itself. , The Good Boatman: A Portrait of Gandhi (New Delhi: Penguin, 1995), 122-4; Judith Brown, “The Mahatma in Old Age: Gandhi’s Role in Indian Political Life: 1935-1942,” in Congress and Indian Nationalism: The Pre- Independence Phase, eds. Richard Sisson and Stanley Wolpert (London: University of California Press, 1988), 292-7; Ainslie T. Embree, “The Function of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh,” in

! 207! control of Singapore, Gandhi warned that an abrupt withdrawal of Allied troops from India would possibly result in Japan’s occupation of India and the fall of China.36 Many, especially Gandhi, had previously criticised Japanese aggression in China, a fact that did not go unnoticed amongst Japanese officials, some of whom who challenged the decision to give Japanese military support to an Indian Independence initiative in Southeast Asia. In a letter addressed “To Every Japanese’ published in Gandhi’s Harijan newspaper (26 July 1942), Gandhi criticised Japan’s ‘merciless devastation’ of China and promised a robust resistance if Japanese troops entered India. The Japanese press reproduced the statement.37

In addition to mixed Japanese reactions to the statements of Congress leaders, Indians in Malaya also occupied a potentially precarious position in the sense that their close associations with the British allowed for ambiguous interpretations of their position towards the Japanese. During British rule, Indians had been deeply imbricated in the transcolonial world. Indians enjoyed subject status within the Empire and many English-educated Indians were involved in the civil service and public sector in Britain.38 The personal interests of many elite Indians in Malaya had been closely linked to British authority in the region.39 Additionally, Indians comprised the largest segment of the British military forces stationed in Malaya. During the initial Japanese advance into Malaya, there were instances where captured Indian troops were summarily executed, indicating that a policy of soliciting defections from captured Indian POWs to the newly established INA was not a uniform practice on the battlefield. On one occasion noted by British military intelligence, captured Indian troops serving under the Malaya Command in Johore were massed together, beaten, stabbed and then doused in fuel and finally set on fire while many were still alive. Their bodies were left to rot for two months, before the Japanese sent labourers from the Public Works Department to dispose of the corpses.40 Besides the heavy Indian

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of Movements, eds. Martin Emil Marty and R. Scott Appleby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 648 36 “Gandhi Sees Dangers of “Quit India” Policy,” Argus, June 30, 1942, 3. 37 Gandhi, The Good Boatman, 124. 38 “Beyond the Frame: Indian British Connections” (An Open University Project), accessed March 1, 2014, http://www.open.ac.uk/arts/research/asianbritain/. 39 Government authorities in both menial and white-collar professions employed a large number of Indians. Many members of the Indian Association were government employees and had expressed loyalty to the British authorities. Arasaratnam, Indians in Malaysia, 83. 40 War of 1939-1944, WO 325/46 NAB1111, NAS.

! 208! composition of Allied troops defending Malaya, there were many reasons to presume that the Japanese might have collectively assessed Indians as potential enemies and treated them as a hostile race.

In the event, Indians were categorised as allies of the Japanese. This was largely due to the interventions of a Japanese intelligence officer of relatively junior rank, Major Fujiwara Iwaichi. Iwaichi had established contacts with various Indian Independence networks in Southeast Asia in the late 1930s, and was able to convince the Office of the General Staff in Tokyo of the feasibility of engaging widespread Indian support.41 Official Japanese support for Indian-led anti-British activity was later cemented by the ability of Iwaichi’s organisation, the F Kikan, to infiltrate enemy lines and secure the mass surrender and defection of Indian troops. According to his memoirs, Fujiwara truly believed in the cause of Pan-Asian Nationalism and wanted to offer genuine support to the Indian Independence Movement. 42 Fujiwara’s ability to convince Captain Mohan Singh of good Japanese intentions led to Singh’s decision to lead defecting Indian POWs as the head of the first incarnation of the Indian National Army.

Performing Indian Identity

The establishment in Singapore of the first INA in February 1942, along with official Japanese support for the Indian Independence League of East Asia, established a favoured race status for Malaya’s Indians. From that point Indians had a strong incentive to ethnically identify themselves to Japanese soldiers and administrators, as a reminder of their inclusion in the special relationship between the Japanese authorities and the Indian population. Oral history documents in the National Archives of Singapore are filled with accounts of individuals declaring themselves “Indian” to sentries and soldiers throughout the duration of the occupation. 43

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 41 Fujiwara has detailed his intelligence activities in Southeast Asia and his subsequent liaison work for the Indian community in Malaya in his published memoirs. Iwaichi, F. Kikan. 42 Fujiwara described himself as the “Lawrence of Arabia of Southeast Asia.” Ibid., 227. 43 For an example, refer to Vasagar Subramanian Manickar, Acc. No. 001201, Reel: 9, Oral History Centre, NAS. Damodaran Kesavan, an Indian who enlisted with the INA in Singapore remembers that Chinese individuals would also often pretend to be the wives or relations of Indians in order to lessen

! 209! Historian Samuel Dhoraisingam describes how many Indians learnt to identity themselves to soldiers with Japanese phrases such as “watakushi wa Indo-jin des” (I am an Indian).44 Another interviewee remembers an incident that occurred when she was a child during the occupation. While her family was crossing a wooded area in Geylang in the east of Singapore, a squad of Japanese soldiers mistook her light- complexioned father for a European in disguise and attempted to detain him.45 Her father explained to the soldiers that he was Indian and “belonged to Chandra Bose.”46 She recalls that the Japanese soldiers subsequently proceeded to assume a friendly disposition and even gave her biscuits and chocolates.

Such anecdotal encounters, imbued with the vital knowledge that identifying oneself as Indian guaranteed a degree of protection, soon spread through between networks of families and friends. These verbal declarations also became performative in the sense that declaring oneself “Indian” also came signify one’s willingness to sublimate sub- ethnic Indian identities (such as Tamil, Bengali, Malayalee and so on) and to display support for the concept of Indian unity that the Japanese felt was crucial for the success of the independence movement. Conversely individuals who identified themselves by sub-ethnic designations often found themselves corrected. An oral history interviewee, Pakirisamy Naidu, recalled an incident when a Japanese sentry asked his friend what ethnic group he belonged to. When his friend replied with “Ceylonese” the sentry slapped, kicked and yelled at him, informing him that he was “Indo-jinn” or Indian.47 According to Naidu, the Japanese neither recognised nor tolerated expressions of difference, and many Ceylonese individuals began identifying themselves as “Indo-jinn.”48 For the Ceylonese Tamils who had been marked out as a separate group from the rest of the Indian community in Malayan !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the likelihood of harassment from the Japanese sentries that were stationed along the street corners of the city. Damodaran s/o Kesavan, Acc. No. 000127, Reel: 3, Oral History Centre, NAS. 44 Dhoraisingam, Peranakan, 21. 45 This incident occurred between 1943 and 1944 by which time all non-German, Italian and Swiss Europeans in Singapore had been detained in internment camps and were no longer seen walking around in public. Mrs. D. Jawharilal, interview by author, January 8, 2012. 46 Ibid. 47 Pakirisamy Naidu Ramoo, Acc. No. 000827, Reel: 11, Oral History Centre, NAS. 48 Ibid. This example highlights the ambiguities contained within the term “Indian” which designated both a racial and national affiliation. Ceylon was not officially a part of British India having been administered as a separate crown colony since 1798. There was no major push for unification between India and Ceylon as a single sovereign state entity, and the politics of both territories in the 1930s and 1940s were geared towards their eventual independence as separate states. Hence the Ceylonese diaspora in Singapore did not have a considerable interest in the movement to liberate India or in identifying with a future Indian nation state.

! 210! censuses since 1931 and in many ways considered themselves a separate group, this would have been a confusing adjustment.49

Apart from performative verbal declarations of racial identity, some Indians began to alter their clothing, and adopting dress that they felt indicated an Indian identity in a manner more recognisable to Japanese soldiers.50 This was especially so amongst Indians who had previously identified with forms of sub-ethnic Indian identity that were hybridised, or had developed syncretic links with other cultures on the Malayan Peninsula. Straits-born Indian women, who had previously worn Malay-style sarong kebayas, began wearing sarees, as did Peranakan Indians.51 Some Peranakan Indians from mixed marriages began to apply ash markings or pottus on their foreheads to override their Chinese and Malay features, marking themselves as Hindus and hence also as Indians.52 At great personal risk, some Peranakan Indians in Singapore and Melaka disguised Chinese women in sarees and applied markings to their foreheads in order to pass them off as Peranakan Indians.53 Clothing was one of the many ways that the multiplicities that were invoked in previously heterogeneous displays of “Indianness” were gradually streamlined within narrower and narrower boundaries in order to fit into the limited and normative understandings of Indian identity held by Japanese soldiers.

Conditional Support and Pan-Indian Unity

The special status of Indians, therefore, was not unconditional. It was in some ways predicated on a demonstration of unity as well as widespread compliance with and support for the two major Indian institutions, the INA and IIL. Many in the Japanese !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 49 “Grievances of Indians in Malaya,” Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, June 9, 1939, 3. 50 Occasionally the Japanese would also issue instructions for Indians to wear specific articles of clothing such as white armbands when they were congregating in large groups at public events so that they could be identified as Indians. Narayanasamy Ramasamy, Acc. No. 0011194, Reel: 8, Oral History Centre, NAS. 51 Sellapan Ramanathan, interview by author, February 16, 2011. 52 Dhoraisingam, Peranakan, 21. 53 Ibid. The Chinese community also sought the help of Indians at security check-points where they would pretend to be the family relations of Indian individuals to stand a better chance of getting Japanese sentries to allow them to pass without incident. Damodaran s/o K. Kesavan, Acc. No. 000127, Reel: 3, Oral History Centre, NAS.

! 211! administration were afraid that divisions within the Indian community would undermine Japanese support for an independence movement. At the same time many Indian leaders in the INA and the IIL were under pressure to demonstrate that caste, religion and ethnicity would not divide the community and that Japanese support would not be wasted on the movement. Failure to convince the Japanese in this would not only have removed protection for Indian POWs, it would have also removed the special status granted to Indian civilians. Premier Hideki Tojo had stressed in an earlier speech given to Indian representatives in Tokyo that in exchange for Japanese support for an armed Indian movement, the Japanese expected Indians to do away with communal, caste and sectarian differences. Addressing Indian community leaders who had flown to Tokyo from Malaya, he said:

If you lose this golden opportunity by being…. too much involved in mutual antagonisms, you and your descendants would remain as slaves for nobody knows how long…On her part what Japan expects from India is that she should do away with all the retarding ideas of religious and class antagonisms and the various rivalries between political and military ways of thought…54

A staff officer, Colonel Okamura, also expressed his concerns about Indian disunity within the INA to Mohan Singh. Colonel Okamura admitted to Mohan Singh that he had no knowledge about “the national character of the Indian” but had heard that it was “difficult in India to promote united action for Indian independence because of religious rivalries, the traditional caste system, and antagonism between different ethnic groups.”55 The INA, IIL and F Kikan were under pressure to demonstrate Indian cohesion in the face of continuing Japanese ambivalence towards the Indian community from certain senior leaders.56 Mohan Singh’s reply to Okamura was that the problems of caste and communalism were being “rectified” and that foreigners tended “to exaggerate” the differences between Indians.57 He also assured Okamura

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 54 War of 1939-1944 WO 325/46 NAB1111, Appendix “V” to S Section CSDIC (I) Report No. 1007 on H/1050 CAPT MOHAN SINGH 1/14 PUNJAB, 62, NAS. 55 Iwaichi, F. Kikan, 158-9. 56 Fujiwara felt that the lack of clarity in Japan’s India policy was the reason why senior Indian leaders overseas did not show support to the movement in 1942. Ibid, 161. 57 Ibid, 159.

! 212! that religious, caste and ethnic differences would not become a cause for disunity within the INA.58

The Independence League also pledged to embrace “all Indian people who irrespective of ethnic, religious and political differences, wish to fight against Britain for independence.” 59 Throughout the occupation, the Japanese-sanctioned Indian press was also keen to highlight the impression that caste and ethnic divisions had been reconciled for the greater cause of India’s liberation.60 One article in Young India declared for instance that “that all Indians in East Asia are united, regardless of religion or caste and that they are determined to fight for the freedom of their common Motherland.”61

The evolution of a normative pan-Indian identity began to take shape and be promoted in various ways by these organisations as a result of these pressures. Mohan Singh successfully organised the INA in a manner such that divisiveness over issues of caste, religion and ethnicity were not tolerated.62 Religious differences were not recognised within the INA, to the extent that prayer allowances were not even granted to Muslim soldiers during training hours.63 Unlike in the British Indian Army, soldiers in the INA were not segregated according to caste, religion or rank during meal times.64 Krishnan Kolamgare, a young adult during the occupation remembered that many Indians joined the INA after the arrival of Subhas Chandra Bose and that the community experienced a period of unity when ethnic and caste differences were set aside:

“…[W]hether North Indian or South Indian, or Bengali or a Tamil or a Malayalam, all (were) united together…India has unlimited castes, but here when they got a proper leader, they didn’t show that they were different races or castes but had a great unity.”65

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid, 44. 60 “Indians in East Asia,” Young India, August 1, 2303(1943), 7. 61 “Freedom or Death,” Young India, August 1, 2303(1943), 4. 62 Iwaichi, F. Kikan, 159. 63 Kishore Bhattacharya, Acc. No. 003490, Reel: 1/4, Oral History Centre, NAS. 64 Thangavel, “Indian National Army,” 25. 65 Kolamgare Krishnan, Acc. No. 001252, Reel: 5, Oral History Centre, NAS.

! 213! Oral history accounts reflecting on this period suggest that a community identity was not only self-policed, but that Japanese soldiers had received basic instructions to intervene and stamp out communal and caste differences between Indians with violence and coercive intimidation.66 In one memorable incident, a minor scuffle occurred between high caste Hindu and untouchable workers over lunchtime seating arrangements in the mess hall of the HM Naval Base in Sembawang. A Japanese soldier present, when given an explanation of the cause of the argument from a translator, not only ruled that the high caste Hindus would go without food, but made the workers line up to slap them, reserving the first opportunity to the untouchables among them.67 Dissatisfied with the low intensity of the slapping delivered by the workers, the soldier apparently volunteered a forceful demonstration, and insisted on the workers giving it one more attempt.

The Appropriation of Indian National Congress Symbols

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Congress leaders like Gandhi and Nehru enjoyed considerable popularity amongst large sections of the Indian community in Malaya. Bose’s own popularity amongst the Malayan population was partially the result of his previous association with the Congress, and his earlier public proximity to Gandhi. It was recognised by both Japanese and Indian leaders that utilising the public appeal of the Congress would be useful for mobilising wider support for the revolutionary nationalist cause. Despite the vocal criticisms that Indian Congress leaders like Gandhi and Nehru made against Japanese military aggression, it appears that Japanese soldiers were instructed to show respect to symbols of the Congress. During Major Fujiwara Iwaichi’s initial discussions with Mohan Singh, they discussed the importance of attempting to secure the support of the Congress movement. Fujiwara appears to have believed that given enough pressure from the Indian public, the Congress would have been forced to support an armed confrontation with the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 66 The precise instructions are difficult to obtain because Japanese forces in Singapore destroyed most military documents after surrendering. 67 V. Thamizhmaraiyan and Thyagarajan Panghanathan, interview by author, December 12, 2010.

! 214! British.68 As a result, Japanese soldiers were instructed to show respect to the likenesses of Gandhi and Nehru.

One oral history account relates that when entering Indian homes and seeing pictures of Gandhi or Nehru, Japanese soldiers would salute the portraits and leave the occupants unmolested, a practice which prompted many families to move their portraits from inner rooms to outer verandahs.69 Another account reveals that soon after entering Singapore, Japanese forces racially divided local inhabitants trying to cross the Elgin Bridge. The soldiers beckoned to Indians when it was their turn to cross, referring to them as “Gandhis”, demonstrating that even at a very early stage of the occupation, the average Japanese soldier associated Indians with the Indian Independence Movement, probably as a result of prior briefing.70 Another interviewee remembers wearing a badge with Gandhi’s image and being allowed to pass through inspections once Japanese soldiers had spotted it.71 Such behaviour from soldiers encouraged Indians civilians to adopt the easily recognizable images and symbols of the Indian National Congress as a visible reminder to the soldiers of their Indian identity.

The IIL and INA also utilised Congress symbols as unifying tools. Wartime censorship helped to downplay the inherent ironies involved in utilising Nehru and Gandhi, both staunch advocates of non-violent resistance, as symbols within the INA. Two of the first few INA brigades, for example, were named the Gandhi and Nehru Brigades.72 Indian propaganda papers published in Singapore during the war, such as Young India and Azad Hind, also featured large full page photographs of these leaders, noted their birthdays and published news about their health and wellbeing, while censoring their public professions of support for the Allies.73 By appropriating

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 68 Iwaichi, F. Kikan, 83. 69 Pakirisamy Naidu Ramoo, Acc. No. 000827, Reel: 11, Oral History Centre, NAS; Sumitra Appan, Acc. No. 003340, Reel: 4, Oral History Centre, NAS; Bala Subramanion, Acc. No: 003340, Reel: 4, Oral History Centre, NAS. 70 Joginder Singh, Acc. No. 000365, Reel: 8, Oral History Centre, NAS. 71 Kolamgare Krishnan, Acc. No. 001252, Reel: 5, Oral History Centre, NAS. 72 Thangavel, “Indian National Army,” 25. English language Indian newspapers produced in Singapore during the Occupation like the Azad Hind were subject to less censorship than the main English daily, the Syonan Shimbun. News about the Russian advance in Manchuria and the atomic bomb were first revealed in the Azad Hind. Joginder Singh, Acc. No. 000365, Reel: 8, Oral History Centre, NAS. 73 Young India: Journal for Indian Youths in East Asia 1, no. 37, November 14, 2603(1943), cover page; “Mahatma Gandhi,” Azad Hind, May 5, 2604(1944), 2.

! 215! the political and social capital of Gandhi and Nehru and utilizing them as widely recognized symbols of the armed movement, the INA, IIL and later the Provisional Government of Free India under Subhas Chandra Bose attempted to gain credibility and legitimacy amongst the Indian population by linking themselves to a much wider transnational movement for Indian Independence that had been established for a much longer period of time. Another reason that the Congress leaders were utilised as symbols for the movement was that the English-educated Indian elites in Malaya, such as the prominent lawyer S.C. Goho, who were drawn into the leadership of IIL, were already staunch supporters of the Indian National Congress.74 These prominent individuals, many of whom had previously been associated with the Indian Association in Singapore and had served in the Indian Passive Defence Force before the fall of Singapore, had previously promoted pan-Indian unity and supported the all- India politics of the Indian National Congress movement.75 As a result of their ascension into leadership roles over the wider Indian community, support for the Congress began to be seen as a defining feature of the new, normative, pan-Indian identity was that was coming into being during the occupation. By extension, this phenomenon marginalized other community leaders who were excluded from the Indian Independence League and Provisional Government of India, but had previously advanced alternative ideas about diasporic identity and transnational membership to an imagined community that differed sharply from the pan-Indian ideal.

Tamil Nationalism and Tamil Separatist Tendencies

The fresh emphasis placed on the Congress alienated sections of the Indian population that, prior to the occupation, did not necessarily support the Congress or its vision of

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 74 Some other oral history interviewees have also suggested that English-educated Indian leaders who were co-opted into the new leadership structure did not believe in that an armed struggle for Indian independence would succeed, or that Japanese would retain power, but cooperated to ensure a degree of safety for the Indian community. Joginder Singh, Acc. No. 000365, Reel: 9, Oral History Centre, NAS. 75 S.C. Goho (1891-1948) served as the President of the Indian Association (Malaya) in the years before the occupation and started the Indian Passive Defence Force after the Japanese invasion of Malaya. He also managed to secure ships to evacuate Indians by cabling Gandhi before the fall of Singapore. “Mr. S. C. Goho Dies in Calcutta,” Straits Times, July 26, 1948, 5.

! 216! pan-Indian unity. Tamil-educated leaders in Malaya, who emerged in the early 1930s, offered a different vision of the future for Tamils in Malaya that focused specifically on Tamil ethnic identity rather a wider “Indian” one. A.C. Suppiah and G. Sarangapany challenged the pan-Indian vision of the English-educated elites and promoted the ideology of Periyar’s Self Respect Movement in the Madras Presidency. Suppiah and Sarangapany spread Periyar’s ideology through the social outreach programmes of the Tamil Reform Association, as well as through Sarangapany’s Tamil newspapers. Periyar’s views on Tamil identity were coloured by an intense frustration at the perceived political and social marginalisation of South Indians at the hands of largely Hindi-speaking North Indians.

Periyar, who left the Congress under acrimonious circumstances in 1925, saw the Congress as a party controlled by high-caste northern Brahmins. He viewed the vision of an independent united India under Congress rule as an outcome that would have further institutionalised the marginalisation of the South. On many occasions Periyar proclaimed that a limited extension of British rule was preferable to a hastily attained independence and an India run by the Congress. He also claimed that an Allied defeat would have been disastrous for Dravidians and would have led to their subjugation by the North. 76

One key outcome of the efforts of Tamil leaders to define “Dravidian” Tamil ethnicity during the 1930s was the widespread acceptance of the Tamil language as the most crucial aspect of Tamil and Dravidian identity and as the source of Tamil culture. Not only was Tamil venerated, according to Periyar’s ideology it was also held in direct opposition to the Hindi and Sanskrit-based languages of the North. Perceived challenges to the Tamil language induced visceral emotional responses and when the Government of Madras attempted to introduce Hindi in the secondary school syllabus there major anti-Hindi agitation erupted between 1937 and 1940 that led to the abandoning of attempts to teach Hindi. During this period Tamils in Malaya organised anti-Hindi committees in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Perak, Seramban, Batu Pahat and Penang that displayed transnational Tamil solidarity by passing resolutions that

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 76 “Allied Defeat, Disaster to India: Separation of Dravidanad Urged, to Preserve Tamil Culture and Civilization and Prevent Aryan Domination Over Tamilians: Periyar Ramasamy Speaks out at Tinnevelly,” Tamil Murasu, June 25, 1940, 7.

! 217! vehemently criticised the attempt to teach Hindi in Madras.77 After compulsory Hindi was abolished in schools in Madras on the 21st of February 1940, celebrations were organised by Sarangapany’s Tamil Reform Association throughout Malaya.78 In Singapore, Tamils gathered en masse to celebrate at the Happy World Malay Opera Theatre.79

However during the Japanese Occupation, manifestations of Tamil identity in exclusivist terms seems to have disappeared rapidly from the public sphere. With the disappearance of Dravidian Tamil ethnic discourse from the public sphere, untouchables who identified with the Dravidian social movement were no longer able to identify themselves as casteless Dravidian Tamils.

During the occupation, the increasing promotion of Hindi and Hindustani as “national” languages for Indians was met with scarcely any hint of protest from Tamil circles, something which would have been unthinkable a few years prior. Only one incident near the beginning of the occupation hints at resistance to the marginalisation of the Tamil language. During a speech given by Major Fujiwara and Captain Mohan Singh a microphone malfunction meant that the speech was made in English and Hindi without a Tamil translation. There was a subsequent uproar among Tamil members of the audience and the next day, S.C Goho, published a statement as the head of the Indian Independence League and admonished the community for clinging to communal sentiments.

Sarangapany himself joined the INA, a sharp contrast to his actions one year before, when he was part of a team responsible for welcoming the Australian Imperial Force to Singapore on behalf of the Tamils Reform Association.80 The only surviving operation of his Tamil Reform Association during the occupation was a Tamil branch library in Seletar.81 The near complete silence of Tamil leaders who had previously !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 77 Sathisan, “Power of Print,” 67. 78 Ibid., 102. Later when anti-Hindi agitations re-occurred in Madras in 1949 after the war, some Tamils in Malaya left to participate. Arasaratnam, Indians in Malaysia, 128. 79 “Singapore Tamils and Hindi,” Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, March 9, 1940, 4. 80 “Tamils Welcome the AIF,” Straits Times, February 24 Feb, 1941, 10. The AMTA also passed a resolution during this period to discuss defence measures in case of a Japanese attack. 81 Nair, “Tamils Reform Association,” 20; V. Tamizhmaraiyan and Thyagarajan Panghanathan, interview by author, December 12, 2010. One of the reasons Sarangapany did so might have been to protect his Chinese wife Lim Boon Neo from the Japanese military forces.

! 218! subscribed to Dravidian ideology before the occupation hints at the extent to which the war ruptured and re-ordered power relations within the Indian community. Expressions of exclusivist sub-ethnic or linguistic Indian identities became dangerous, given the new emphasis on fostering pan-Indian unity under Japanese pressure. Also the exclusive enlistment of community leaders who believed in a pan-Indian transnational identity provided strong and unchallenged institutional support for such a conception of Indian identity, one that transcended the ethno-linguistic and regional markers that had marked out the boundaries of self-identification for many before the war. Furthermore the Japanese who, according to IIL member Dr K.R. Menon, simply did not understand the purpose of Indian social and cultural organisations, banned all the Indian organisations that had existed prior to the occupation, including the ones that had previously advanced narrower community interests.82

Other Communities

Although criticism of the Pan-Indian ideal or of the politics and ideology of the INA never surfaced in public in Malaya, some communities expressed their disagreement by either displaying a reluctance to show support to the movement or by quietly withdrawing from public life. Tamils were initially sceptical about joining the INA, which they viewed as a North Indian-dominated organisation until the arrival of Bose.83 Other groups who did not identify with the future Congress-led Indian state also remained aloof. Multiple testimonies suggest that Muslim and Ceylonese communities largely stayed away from the INA and the IIL.84

Accounts from British intelligence documents and personal testimonies also suggest that a significant proportion of Muslims in the Southeast Asian region remained loyal

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 82 Kanichat Raghava Menon, Acc. No. 000025, Reel: 5, Oral History Centre, NAS. 83 Yoji and Mako, New Perspectives, 18. Sugata Bose argues that at least eighteen thousand mostly Tamil civilians answered Bose’s call and joined the second INA, training alongside the professional soldiers who came from north-western regions of India and who had defected from the British Army. Bose, Hundred Horizons, 175. 84 Thangavel, “Indian National Army,” 21; A. Khan, Acc. No. 000400, Reel: 10, Oral History Centre, NAS; Sellapan Ramanathan, interview by author, February 16, 2011; T.R.S. Pathy, Acc. No. 000360, Reel: 2, Oral History Centre, NAS; Gnanasundram Thevathasan, Acc. No.000345, Reel: 12, Oral History Centre, NAS.

! 219! to the Crown, and that the INA had an acrimonious relationship with Muslim merchants, coercing them to make extortionate financial contributions to the organisation and even threatening detention for those who failed to pledge significant amounts of money.85 Ten days after the formal surrender of the Japanese on 22nd of February 1945, the Indian Muslim community in Singapore celebrated the return of the British with a large parade in Selegie Road that included the carrying of Union Jacks and as well as banners and images of the King and Queen.86 They were probably the first Indian community to publicly celebrate the return of the British, which suggests not only how the ideology and purpose of the Indian Independence movement had had limited resonance with the community during the war, but also how they publically distanced themselves from the movement during the war.

The Ceylonese Tamil community had, prior to the occupation, also been conspicuous public supporters of the British war effort, and the community had contributed regularly to the Malaya Patriotic Fund from the 1930s. The fund provided financial support to disabled Allied troops and made general contributions to the Allied war effort.87 The Ceylonese Tamils were also actively involved in other forms of support and fund-raising that received publicity from the press, demonstrating the community’s willingness to go beyond what many other communities were doing for the Allied war effort. The Ceylon Tamils’ Association organised fund-raising concerts whilst Ceylonese women started a Ceylon Women War Workers Party, stitching pillowcases, handkerchiefs and roll bandages for members of the British armed services.88 The Ceylonese community also raised funds for the acquisition of a British fighter plane.89

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 85 in Saigon, 1942, POL(S) 2519 1942, NA, UK; Dispatch, September 6, 1946, POL(S) 1345 1946, NA, UK; Abdulkader Tyebally, Acc. No.000161, Reel: 4, Oral History Centre, NAS. 86 “Singapore Muslims Parading with Patriotic Emblems to Welcome Return of the British to Singapore at the Junction of Selegie Road and Short Street,” 1945, Acc. Nos. 111013,111014, NAS /Imperial War Museum. 87 “Ceylon Tamils’ Gift to Patriotic Fund,” Straits Times, May 15, 1941,10. 88 “Untitled,” Straits Times, December 19, 1940, 10; “Doing Their Bit for the Fighting Forces,” Straits Times, December 14, 1939, 8. 89 “Ceylon Tamils’ Fund for Fighter Plane,” Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, September 25, 1941, 7.

! 220! It was perhaps this conspicuous display of support that led the wartime Indian press in Malaya to question the loyalty of the Ceylonese community.90 Recognising that the community was being subject to scrutiny, leaders were prompted to declare support to the INA and IIL. The Member-in-Charge of the Ceylon chapter of the IIL proclaimed during the occupation that that the Ceylonese were “Indians first and anything else afterwards.”91

! North Indian-Centric Racial Normativity

Most of the Indian POWs who first joined the first INA were Hindi and Hindustani- speakers, many of them Sikhs from cities in the Punjab like Kapurthala and Bahawalpur.92 The upper echelons of the INA were also filled with Hindi, Urdu and Hindustani-speaking military personnel and this remained the case after many South Indians began joining the second INA in great numbers after the arrival of Bose. As a result of this demographic tilt, Hindustani came to be utilised as the language of the INA, replacing the English that many veterans had used during their time in the British Army. Hindustani was also spoken at the INA and the Junior Cadet Corps of the INA. Non-Hindustani speaking recruits were pressured to pick up the language and suffered ridicule if they failed to understand commands.93 Many began to learn the language through involvement with the INA and its youth wings and the growing prominence and influence of Hindustani spread into civil society as the language began to be seen as an integral part of Indian identity.94 Hindustani classes began sprouting up in Race Course Lane after Bose’s arrival and Hindustani lessons as well as Romanised Hindustani songs and poems were frequently published in English

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 90 “Ceylonese Here Urged to Give Unstinted Support to India’s Freedom War,” Azad Hind, April 7, 2604(1944), 2. 91 Ibid. 92 Most Secret Cipher Telegram dispatched on 31st August 1942 to the War Office, IOR:L/P&J/12/761 POL(8) 1849/42, NA, UK. 93 S. V. Lingam, Acc. No. 000014, Reel: 7, Oral History Centre, NAS; Shinji, Interview Documents, 80-81. 94 Anthony Daniels, Acc. No. 000277, Reel: 4, Oral History Centre, NAS. Some parents made their children study Hindustani because they were afraid that without Hindustani their children would be made to study Japanese and then risked being drafted into the Japanese Army.

! 221! language Indian newspapers.95 That these appeared in the neutral space of English medium papers supports the possibility that Hindustani was being promoted as an embryonic national language for the future independent Indian state. Many were explicit about the fact that they considered Hindustani the future national language of India.

Subhas Chandra Bose himself introduced Hindustani slogans, like “Chalo Delhi (onward to Delhi)!”, at major rallies held in the Padang. The Young India newspaper in Singapore reported that at a Sunday parade, “the air was rent with lusty shouts of Hindustani phrases like “Inquilab Zindabad”, “ Azad Hind Zindabad” and “Netaji ki Jai.” 96 The writer of the article left the phrases un-translated indicating their widespread normalisation. In Malaya, the pan-Indian identity that was being promoted during this period privileged selective aspects of Northern Indian culture that were represented as a normative representation of a generic Indian identity. Apart from the promotion of Hindustani, many North Indian symbols were being promoted as pan-Indian, without a corresponding reference to elements of Indian culture from other regions of the subcontinent. The women’s wing of the INA was named after the Rani of Jhansi and Young India frequently featured stories about Indian history that were weighted towards the history of Northern India in terms of its references to individuals, groups and kingdoms.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 95 Sellapan Ramanathan, interview by author, February 16, 2011; “Hindustani Lesson 40,” Azad Hind, October 29, 2603(1943), 2; “Bharat Bhag Hai Jaga”, “Jan-I-Hind” Young India, November 21, 2603(1943), 1. The enthusiasm amongst some Tamils for learning Hindustani during the war emerged in stark contrast to attitudes before the war when the Malayan Indian Congress’ plan to promote Hindustani amongst Tamils by setting up associations and schools was not met with success. “Malayan Tamils Learn Hindustani,” Straits Times, August 3, 1941, 3. 96 “War Declaration,” Young India, October 31, 2603(1943), 4-7.

! 222!

Figure 7. Cover pages from two copies of the Young India. The image on the left is of the Rani of Jhansi. The photo on the right, above the description “An I.N.A Soldier” is of a Sikh soldier. Sikhs were often used as ideal representatives of the INA, a fact that contributed to public associations between Sikhs and the INA and which contributed to Chinese reprisals after the occupation that targeted the Sikh community exclusively.97

The clearest indication of the normativity of a north Indian identity during this period comes in an oral account of the war from Pereira, a South Indian who lived in Singapore during the occupation. A young boy at the time, Pereira remembers joining the INA to see “proper Indians” whom he identified at the time as being North Indian and whom he contrasted with less authentic South Indians who were “short” and “dark-coloured” and not as “inspiring.”98

Untouchables during the Occuption ! Caste prejudice, which had bedeviled large segments of the Hindu community prior to the war, seems to have retreated during this period in part due to an aggressive

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 97 Young India, October 24, 2603(1943), cover page; Young India, August 29, 2603(1943), cover page; Lee Tian Soon, Acc. No. 000265, Reel: 7, Oral History Centre, NAS. 98 Tobias Pereira, Acc. No. 003516, Reel: 5, Oral History Centre, NAS.

! 223! propaganda push against caste divisions by the IIL and its propaganda efforts. Hunger, deprivation and unemployment were equalizing experiences for Indian labourers and issues of caste hierarchy became significantly less important when faced with the struggle of day-to-day survival. Unlike the British, who had often acquiesced either actively or passively in facilitating the retention of caste boundaries amongst the Tamil municipal and plantation workforce, no such provisions were made by the Japanese and it was difficult to practice caste differentiation in the public sphere.

Subhas Chandra Bose made his views on caste publicly clear on a number of occasions. On one occasion in 1943, Bose initially refused an invitation to attend a religious festival at a major Hindu temple in Singapore on the grounds that non- Hindus and low-caste Hindus were to be barred entry. Compromising, the high priests eventually reframed the event at the temple as a “national demonstration” and opened it to all castes and communities.99

Public perceptions of untouchables also changed in part due to their enlistment in the second INA, after the arrival of Subash Chandra Bose in Singapore. 100 Some interviewees argue that for untouchable Hindus, enlisting in the INA and donning an INA uniform was an emancipatory experience that raised their esteem and granted them increased social recognition.101 The ability to join the military was associated with prestige, respect and for some, a sense of recovered masculinity.102

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 99 Bose, Hundred Horizons, 179-80. 100 “More Volunteers for INA Arrive,” Azad Hind, January 18, 2604(1944), 2. 101 Sellapan Ramanathan, interview by author, February 16, 2011; V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 24, 2011 102 V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 24, 2011.

! 224!

Figure 8. INA enlistees in Singapore in 1943.103

In her work on the construction of Dalit masculinities in , Charu Gupta highlights the ways in which Dalit groups have invoked martial traditions to contest pejorative stereotypes of Dalits being weak, docile and effeminate. 104 She also highlights the attempts made by Dalit spokespersons to gain enlistment opportunities for their caste members in the army during the Second World War and notes the way that Dalit genealogies considered enlistment in the army as a “defining moment in the establishment of social and political affirmation, prestige and manhood.”105 The connections made by untouchables between military service and pathways to dignity, respect and social mobility appear to have been fairly widespread across various communities in different parts of India. By 1941, untouchables in India had petitioned

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 103 Young India, July 25, 2603(1943), cover page. 104 Charu Gupta, “Feminine, Criminal or Manly? Imaging Dalit Masculinities in Colonial North India,” The Indian Economic and Social History Review 47, no. 3 (2010): 315, 324. 105 Ibid., 326.

! 225! the Indian government to be allowed to enlist and serve in the war.106 Recognising the military as “one of the most effective channels for upward social mobility”, A. Bopegamaga states that a large number of untouchables, low caste Hindus and tribals rushed to join the British Indian Army and that by the middle of the Second World War, 178,000 out of 2,500,000 Indian soldiers in the British Indian Army were “tribal” or low caste Hindus.107 He argues that time in the military revolutionised the social outlook of most of the untouchable castes in India and that leaders like Ambedkar, recognising the capacity of the military for social upliftment, publicly encouraged untouchables to join the army.108 In 1949, Field Marshall Wavell, the former Viceroy of India (1943-1947), declared triumphantly that the caste system in India was ending, a phenomenon he attributed to the admittance of large numbers of low caste and untouchable Hindus into the army during the Second World War.109

In Singapore, where untouchables had social limitations placed on the kinds of occupations they could seek employment in, and were usually limited to the lowest paying and most physically unpleasant, a chance to join the INA was viewed favourably by many. Dr. M.K. Lukshumeyah, the director of a volunteer training centre in Selangor, described the egalitarian nature of INA volunteer training, and of the special considerations that were made to minimise the risk of religious and caste tensions.

The volunteers hail from all parts of India irrespective of caste, creed, or financial position. Their ages are between 18 and 30, either married or single. As soon as they entered the centre, they mix freely with one another and are trained to show the same brotherly spirit to one and all…[T]here is no class or race distinction among the volunteers and the camp is a self-contained unit in that it has no camp-followers. Camp cooks are selected from among the volunteers by turn. These cook for the whole camp irrespective of religious differences. To

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 106 “Untouchables Appeal for Enlistment,” The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, July 31, 1942, 10. 107 A. Bopegamaga, “The Military as a Modernizing Agent in India,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 20, no. 1 (October 1971): 75. 108 Ibid. Ambedkar’s own father had served in the British Indian Army. 109 “Caste System Ending,” The Singapore Free Press, November 15, 1949, 8.

! 226! enable all to partake of the food, no beef or pork is prepared, the main diet consisting of vegetables, eggs, fish and mutton. 110

S.R. Nathan, Singapore’s former President, who was eighteen years of age at the beginning of the occupation, recalled the psychological impact of enlistment for untouchables in Singapore who chose to sign up.

The INA inculcated in them a strong sense of pride in themselves. When the war ended, these same labourers were no longer the same. They had gone through discipline and recovered their self-respect.111

Nathan also recalled the dramatic change in the appearances of enlisted untouchable labourers who went from wearing shorts and dhoties and often being shirt-less, to being kitted in military uniforms. Since clothing and appearance were an important visual aspect of caste identification, particularly with regards to untouchable labourers, standardised uniforms held a particular symbolic value and facilitated the breaking down of caste prejudices.112

Stephen Cohen has also discussed the relationship between untouchables and the Indian Army, similarly making the link between military service and access to social mobility for the low castes and classes. Cohen however argues that broad-based conscriptions only happened during times of war and that the benefit of increased social mobility for lower segments of society rapidly faded during peacetime in a fairly predictable cyclical fashion during the entire period of British rule.113 In

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 110 “More Volunteer Training Centres,” Young India, July 25, 2603(1943), 3. 111 Sellapan Ramanathan, interview by author, February 16, 2011. 112 I make a similar argument in the second chapter with regards to the introduction of standardised uniforms for 19th century transmarine convicts and the impact that that had on caste identities. In the 1930s, the President of the Southern India Adi-Hindu Welfare Association noted that in villages untouchables caught “holding umbrellas, wearing sandals (and) tying dhoties below the knees” were considered to have committed a “great crime”, providing one example of the continuing relevance of clothing and appearance in the policing and function of caste hierarchies. Government of India, Legislative Assembly Department, Opinions on the Untouchability Abolition Bill, Nos.7-8, Paper No.III, 74, IOR/L/PJ/7/686, BL. 113 Cohen mentions that the there were small numbers of untouchables in British Indian army units in the 19th century, particularly from the Punjab, but that the enlistment of untouchables declined sharply between 1870 and the First World War, in part due to the popularisation of the theory of martial races. However, he notes that during both world wars, untouchable enlistment was first resisted and then hastily accepted due to manpower shortages. Stephen P. Cohen, “The Untouchable Soldier: Caste, Politics, and the Indian Army,” The Journal of Asian Studies 28, no.3 (May 1969): 455-6.

! 227! Singapore however, in conjunction with other factors, societal benefits appear to have been more long lasting and widespread. Although caste prejudices re-emerged in the post-war period, they also appear to have softened considerably due to the many compromises made during the occupation. A year after the Japanese surrender in 1946, Indian temple management committees throughout Malaya began debating the issue of untouchable entry and eventually decided to allow untouchable Hindus to enter Hindu temples the following year.114 C.R. Dasaratha Raj, a legislative councilor in Singapore remarked in 1951 that since the war, the system (of caste differentiation), particularly untouchability, had almost become extinct.”115 This was indicative of the link that was made by many between the war and the softening of caste prejudice.

One interesting outcome of the war was that Malayan communists, who had previously fought in the MPAJA, showed a particular interest in eliciting the support of Tamil labourers, particularly of untouchables in the immediate post-war period, before the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) was banned during the Emergency.116 This happened despite the fact that the Indian community had publicly aligned itself with the Japanese military during the occupation, against which the MPAJA had waged a guerilla war throughout the duration of the occupation. Besides the potential value that unionised rubber tappers and municipal labourers held for the Malayan communists, the Tamils were also viewed as belonging to a community that had received intense anti-British indoctrination and were therefore viewed as an asset to the movement.117 The fact that some INA songs were converted into communist songs

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 114 “Indian to Discuss Caste Distinctions,” Straits Times, October 14, 1946, 5. 115 “Stop Caste Organisation Move,” Straits Times, December 22, 1951, 9. 116 Richard Corridon, a British Intelligence Officer in the Malayan Security Service recollected in an interview that during the post-war period, “the communists were using Indian labour very much in their agitation, exploiting, educating it, leading it.” Richard B. Corridon, Acc. No. 000131, Reel: 1, Oral History Centre, NAS. During the immediate postwar period, the British Military Administration focused exclusively one re-opening English language schools, leaving vernacular schools to fend for themselves. The Indian section of the Communist Party of Malaya was tasked with reviving Tamil education and temporarily was the sole source of funding for many Tamil schools including many untouchable Tamil schools. These included the Ramamoorthy Tamil School, the Singaravellanar Tamil School, Jeevanantham Tamil School, the Bhagavat Singh Tamil School as well as the Vasughi Tamil School in Jalan Besar. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 12, 2010; Soundara Rajan, Acc. No. 001706, Reel: 1, Oral History Centre, NAS. Rajan’s cousin was a member of the CPM involved in the project. 117 Sellapan Ramanathan, interview by author, February 16, 2011. By the early fifties most Indian municipal labourers were members of the Municipal and General Workers Union as well as the Public Works Department Labour Union. E.A. Gardner, Annual Report of the Public Works Department, 1950

! 228! during the immediate postwar period is indicative of the way that the anti-imperial ideology of the INA was utilised by the communists who attempted to establish a sense of continuity between Indian anti-British revolutionary activity and the anti- colonialism of Malayan communism.118

However, many Tamil labourers, including untouchables, did not join the INA and as a consequence were faced with extraordinary hardships that were exacerbated by their marginalised social positions. As the war progressed, many unemployed Tamils and Tamil labourers were forcibly sent to work on the Thailand-Burma Railway, where many died from disease, malnutrition and also often as a result of physical violence and torture.119 Postwar investigations and eyewitness accounts detailed a widely implemented Japanese policy of press-ganging Tamil labourers into forced labour. During an investigation by British intelligence officers, a Japanese envoy admitted that previous figures for total deaths on the railway had been too low, and that of the 100,000 individuals who died whilst being forced to construct the railway, 73,500 were Tamil men, women and children.120 Other observers also noted that Asian labourers were generally treated worse than European POWs and suffered significantly higher casualty rates and worse camp conditions.121

Although forced labour was elicited from amongst the Malays and Chinese, the disproportionate number of Tamil victims was probably due to the fact that they comprised the largest community of physical labourers in Malaya and were probably deemed a suitable group for difficult physical work. Rubber tappers were vulnerable

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Government Printing Office: Singapore, 1951), 5; E.A. Gardner, Annual Report of the Public Works Department, 1952 (Government Printing Office: Singapore, 1953), 7. 118 S. Sockalingam, Acc No. 001619, Reel: 12, Oral History Centre, NAS. Many former INA members were later involved in communist activities in Malaya. Richard B. Corridon, Acc. No. 000131, Reel: 1, Oral History Centre, NAS; V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 24, 2011. 119 Michael Fernandez, Acc. No. 000076, Reel: 2, Oral History Centre, NAS; Jain, South Indians, 5-25; Report on Malayan Labour on Bangkok-Moulmein Railway, 1945-6, 8-15, CO 273/678/1/51007, NA, UK. The extent to which Indian labourers were affected by forced labour on the Death Railway is suggested by a comment in Public Works document produced after the war. The report noted that “the adequate reserves of unskilled labour which were in the past available for employment on major works no longer exist, having been dissipated by ill-treatment and forced emigration during the invasion period.” Malaya Reconstruction Departmental Reports: Public Works, 1945, 5, CO 273/678/51010/3/1945, NA, UK. Tamil coolie camps were also noted to have higher death rates than certain POW camps. Thomas Silcock, Acc. No. 000180, Reel: 8, Oral History Centre, NAS. 120 “Railroad of Death, Grim Story of How 100,000 Died in Nip Slavery,” Straits Times, February 17, 1946, 2. 121 “Coolie Deathtrap,” Straits Times, October 16, 1945, 2.

! 229! to Japanese aggression and female Tamil labourers were sometimes the victims of sexual attacks and violence from Japanese soldiers, suggesting the powerlessness of many Tamil labourers and illustrating the ease with which they must have been rounded up for forced immigration to Thailand and Burma, despite the special relationship between the Indian community and the Japanese authorities.122 Nakara Michiko has described in detail the process by which Asian labourers became involved in the construction of the Thailand-Burma railway, voluntarily at first and increasingly by 1944 through a variety of involuntary means, when voluntary labour began to dry up.123 In some instances, free movie screenings were held in cinemas and during the screenings, the cinema doors were locked and all the adult males in the audience were rounded up and taken to work on the railway.124 At first targeting the unemployed and the homeless, the Japanese soon began to cast their net wider and began targeting labourers more generally, seizing them from their homes and on public streets.125 Roundups occurred suddenly and without warning, often leading to the separation of families. In a conversation, my grandmother recalled that the last time she saw her father, a Tamil labourer, was when he was forcibly seized and loaded onto a truck by Japanese soldiers, leaving her, then a young child, alone on a street corner.

Isolated plantations were seen as easy targets for seizing manpower, and not only were Tamil plantation workers subjected to sudden raids, but plantations were also issued with press-gang quotas which newly appointed Asian managers and representatives from the Labour Department were pressured to fill. 126 Bala Subramanion, who was interviewed by the Oral History Centre of the National Archives of Singapore, recalled that his father, an employee at the Labour Department would cycle to a train station at odd hours of the night during the occupation to make sure that the correct number of Indian labourers were being sent according to estate !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 122 Jain, South Indians, 302; Velauthar Ambiavagar, Acc. No. 000355, Reel: 7, Oral History Centre, NAS. Ambiavagar mentioned that Indian women were still commonly told to hide in backlanes and behind houses when Japanese soldiers were spotted approaching, suggesting that they were still vulnerable to attacks, despite the special status of Indians. No doubt working class women and labourers would have been especially vulnerable. 123 Michiko, “Malayan Labor,” 252-60. 124 Ibid, 257. 125 Details of initial recruitment methods as well as methods of forced recruitment are available in British documents made by eyewitnesses during the occupation. Report on Malayan Labour on Bangkok-Moulmein Railway, 1945-6, 6, CO 273/678/1/51007, NA, UK. 126 Michiko, “Malayan Labor,” 257.

! 230! quotas given to him by the Japanese.127 Subramanion’s father was also responsible for personally selecting able-bodied rubber tappers for transportation to the Thailand- Burma Railway. He was later tasked with running a camp for women and children who had been left behind.

Scant references to labourers employed by Singapore’s Public Works Department suggest that a very large percentage of the department’s municipal labourers were forcibly sent to build the railway and that many died. This fate was probably shared by a very large number of untouchable labourers most of whom worked in units within the PWD. One document states that the Public Cleansing Division, which was almost exclusively staffed by untouchable labourers, ceased to exist during the war owing to a lack of vehicles.128 Other oral accounts indicate that daily municipal cleaning was taken over by ordinary civilians under the instruction of Japanese soldiers or as the report would indicate, simply neglected, especially during the final year of the occupation. The report highlighted that not only had night soil collection almost ceased, but that “large accumulations of filth were found all over the town, every open space was cluttered up with scrap, waste and much unsanitary material.”129 This would suggest that a significant proportion of daily-rated labourers, including untouchable labourers, would have found themselves unemployed and destitute and therefore very likely picked up during police roundups and selected for labour on the railway. In an interview, Krishnan Kolamgare shed light on Japanese methods of surveillance, revealing that he was selected to provide weekly information about the residents of his street.130 He claims that he had a ranking of a “two-” informant in a three-tiered system with differentiated roles, which in itself suggests the widespread utilization of official informants in Japanese governance. Information that was required of informants of his rank included listings persons who were unemployed, further indicating that unemployed persons in urban centers would have found it difficult to go unnoticed.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 127 Bala Subramanion, Acc. No. 003340, Reel: 4, Oral History Centre, NAS. 128 Singapore Reconstruction Departmental Reports: Public Works, 1945-6, 12, CO 273/678/7/51014/ NA, UK. 129 Ibid. 130 Krishnan Kolamgare, Acc. No. 001252, Reel: 4, Oral History Centre, NAS.

! 231! An additional factor that made untouchable labourers particularly vulnerable to deportation was that several government departments were taken over by the Japanese military authorities instead of dissolved, including the Public Works Department. A post-war record states that workers employed in Public Works were ‘persuaded’ or simply forced to join workers on the railway, many making the journey to Siam in overcrowded and unventilated steel wagons.131 Another report on public works in Malaya noted the extensive need for road reconstruction but that “the adequate reserves of unskilled labour which…(had been)… in the past available for employment on major works no longer exist(ed), having been dissipated by ill- treatment and forced emigration during the invasion period”, further suggesting the widespread nature of deportations amongst municipal labourers.132 (Emphasis added.)

Once on the railway, many workers died from malnutrition, disease, sadistic violence and suicide. The Japanese organised thirty British medical officers and two hundred medical staff into a medical unit known as “K Force” to provide medical services along the railway construction. The commander of K Force authored a report after the war that detailed the harrowing conditions faced by Asian labourers. According to the commander, the real function of “K Force” was “to assist in clearing up the epidemiological mess which had been brought about by gross ignorance and mismanagement of (the) mass movement of labour.”133 During his time at various camps, he witnessed numerous incidents, including the practice of Judo on sick coolies, various forms of execution including drownings, and the withholding of food rations from the sick.134 Labourers’ tents in one camp were made of compressed paper that tore in the rain, and the tents were situated next to dense undergrowth that served as a dumping ground for rubbish and the dead. His conservative estimate for the total death rate was half of all Malayan labourers sent to work on the railway.135

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 131 Report on Malayan Labour on Bangkok-Moulmein Railway, 1945-6, p. 5, CO 273/678/1/51007, NA, UK. 132 Malaya Reconstruction Departmental Reports: Public Works, 1945, pp. 5, 7, CO 273/678/51010/3/, NA, UK. 133 Report on Malayan Labour on Bangkok-Moulmein Railway, 1945-6, p.10, CO 273/678/1/51007, NA, UK. 134 Ibid., 14-5. 135 Ibid., 22.

! 232! It is safe to assume that a significant proportion of untouchable municipal workers in Singapore and sizeable number of untouchable plantation rubber tappers perished during the occupation of Malaya as forced labourers. The reasons why more did not join the INA to escape this fate are unclear, but it is likely that for many, military combat remained undesirable. Although roundups and mass deportations were common knowledge amongst the Indian community in Singapore, the full extent of conditions along the railway were unknown until after the war.136 The Japanese were very wary of letting the public know about the high death rates and largely chose to keep labourers along the railway until they died, rather than risking the complication to further recruitment and roundups by allowing the public to view the debilitated condition of returnees.137

Despite the fact that Indians had a special relationship with the Japanese, many from the labouring classes were still subject to violence at their hands. The fate of these labourers was known amongst the Indian community, and therefore the reticence of the Indian Independence League, the Indian National Army as well as former Dravidian leaders on these issues suggests the asymmetries of power that characterised the relationship between these organisations and the Japanese authorities.138

The Effects of the Occupation

During the Japanese Occupation of Malaya, many members of the Indian community found themselves in a situation in which their racial identity had to be publicly represented in ways that would be easily recognised by Japanese military personnel and that would ensure their safety. During this time, the notion of being “Indian” evolved in response to the gaze of the Japanese military establishment, as well as the prerogatives of dominant civilian and military Indian organisations that were created to mobilise the Indian community for an armed struggle against the in India. The necessity of displaying pan-Indian unity meant that previous displays of !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 136 Michael Fernandez, Acc No. 000076, Reel: 2, Oral History Centre, NAS. 137 Report on Malayan Labour on Bangkok-Moulmein Railway, 1945-6, p. 7, CO 273/678/1/51007, NA, UK. 138 Michael Fernandez, Acc No. 000076, Reel: 2, Oral History Centre, NAS.

! 233! ethno-linguistic and religious difference were sublimated and the multiplicities that comprised the full spectrum of Indian ethnicity on the Peninsula became increasingly narrow, with preference shown for particular features of Indian identity or ethnicities over others. As with several other Indian communities, the occupation therefore signalled a rupturing of the discursive trajectories that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, with which the untouchable community in Singapore was attempting to define and assert itself against caste prejudice.

Support for Bose, the INA and IIL also came to be seen as a defining feature of being a loyal and nationally-conscious Indian during the occupation. However, it is difficult to ascertain the degree to which the popular support that was displayed by the masses was driven by enthusiasm for the nationalist cause or coercion and fear. Oral history testimonies provide accounts that support both positions and reflect a range of personal motivations. While some testimonies speak of the personal charisma and fiery oratory of Bose as a catalyst for awakened national consciousness, others argue that many were simply glad that the presence of the INA and IIL gave Indians a special status and a certain degree of protection. Oral history testimonies reveal that many individuals joined the INA to escape the privations of the war or to ensure protection from Japanese aggression. However, while Indians enjoyed a special status and were not as badly treated as the Chinese and European communities in Malaya, they were not beyond the reach of Japanese violence. The Kikans in charge of the Indian community were also not above the jurisdiction of the Japanese Secret Police, or the Kempeitei, which occasionally called in Indian notables and community leaders for questioning. The INA also engaged in coercive practices to ellicit donations, resources and support as well as to intimidate critics within the Indian community.139 In the climate of fear that existed during this period it was safer for individuals to stay within the normative boundaries of a newly defined Indian identity than to attempt to create space for the expression of diversity and difference.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 139 Dr. K. R. Menon, a member of the IIL claimed that in the later stages of the war, the INA exacted forced contributions from the Indian merchant community who were pressured into demonstrating their loyalty through financial means. Kanichat Raghava Menon, Acc. No. 000025, Reel: 7, Oral History Centre, NAS. Ahmad Khan who also worked as a Police Constable and later an officer in an Intelligence Unit under the Japanese claims that the INA had a special unit of military police who made use of torture tactics and murder. Ahmad Khan, Acc. No. 000400, Reel: 10, Oral History Centre, NAS.

! 234! The strongest indicator that ideas about Indian identity were created and sustained by a climate of fear and coercion lies in the speed with which these narratives fell apart after the Japanese surrender. With the Japanese gone, and the INA and IIL dismantled, the institutional structures that produced and propagated pan-Indian cohesion during the war were suddenly removed and expressions of ethno-linguistic identity quickly returned. Fear of judicial proceedings and public reprisals for collusion with the Japanese reduced the willingness amongst many to claim affiliation with or support for the INA and IIL. The Tamil Reform Association and other Dravidianist groups reorganised and recommenced their social programmes and their promotion of an exclusivist Tamil ethnicity. The rapidity with which these organisations returned to their previous operations was mirrored in the wider atomisation of the Indian community in Malaya into smaller linguistic and religious zones of reference.

This indicates that the vision of pan-Indian identity offered during the war failed to resonate with the wider Indian community. An additional factor was that pan- Indianism was largely conceived as a political project and as an instrumental means of facilitating the specific goal of Indian Independence. The achievement of Indian Independence in 1947 therefore also greatly reduced the power of Indian Nationalism as a unifying ideology. Dravidian social reform in contrast was a largely cultural project that lent itself much better to adapting and surviving in a diasporic context in a territory itself approaching decolonisation and independence.

Despite the rapid public disengagement with the pan-Indianism of the occupation and of identification with the Indian National Congress after the war, it had other far- reaching implication for social relations, particularly caste relations. As noted by post- war commentators, the experiences of day-to-day survival during the war, greatly lessened caste prejudices after the war. The experience of military enlistment and constant exposure to the rhetoric of anti-British propaganda politicised surviving untouchable labourers, many of whom found empowerment through unions and for some, through involvement with the Communist Party of Malaya. Another important consequence of the war for untouchables was the demographic changes that emerged as a result of deaths through forced labour. It is impossible to ascertain the exact death toll of untouchable labourers, but I would argue that these would have been fairly

! 235! significant especially amongst municipal labourers in urban centers like Singapore. It is also unclear how many Tamil labourers who survived returned home after the conclusion of the war. There were many survivors who stayed, some of whose personal anecdotes have been used in this chapter. Those who continued to be involved in social and caste reform facilitated a sense of organisational continuity between the pre and post-occupation periods through their continued involvement with various Adi Dravida Sangams and the Tamil Reform Association. Their numbers were buoyed by a new and final wave of Tamil migrants who arrived until the early 1950s as well as young Singapore-born Tamils who began to take an active interest in the reform movement. Both groups began influencing the tenor and nature of social reform in the post-war period. Questions of caste and Tamil identity also began to evolve in response to the dramatic political and social changes that were experienced by Singapore and the rest of the Malayan peninsula in the 1950s and 1960s.

! 236! Chapter Six

The Post-Dravidian Era and the Replacement of Untouchable Subjectivities With Singaporean Tamil ethnicity

‘Race’ in Singapore could function as an immutable identity ascribed to discrete groups, an amalgam of skin colour, language and economic position. From this view, “multiculturalism” was something to be managed from on high. Race became an official category in the management of citizens, first among “multiple, cross-cutting and shifting classifications of the population as the targets of multiple policies.”1

During the post-war period untouchable Tamils in Singapore consciously submerged their caste identities. This began a process of erasure in which untouchable subjectivity would gradually be superseded and then fully replaced by a national Singaporean identity and its associated racialised sub-national ‘racial’ identities, such as Singaporean-Indian and Singaporean-Tamil. Racial identities were not merely conferred by the state; rather, they were dialogically negotiated between the state and community leaders and stakeholders. I argue that the negotiation of both Tamil and Indian identity in Singapore were initially heavily shaped by the ascendency of Dravidian Tamil ideological discourses over other competing identity narratives after the end of the Japanese Occupation.

This was a gradual process, tracing its roots in the Dravidian activism in Singapore of the 1930s and resuming after the war in the late 1940s and 1950s. This process gained momentum in the lead up to independence in 1965 and continued after independence as the first Singaporean government enacted sweeping policies in an effort to forge ethnic cohesion amongst a multi-racial citizenry. I examine the decision made by untouchable leaders in Singapore to adopt a Tamil identity in the context of the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 Sunil Amrith, “Internationalism and Political Pluralism in Singapore, 1950-1963,” in Paths Not Taken: Political Pluralism in Post-War Singapore, eds. Michael D. Barr and Carl A. Trocki (Singapore: NUS Press, 2008), 43. Amrith cites the work of Partha Chatterjee. Partha Chatterjee, “Populations and Political Society,” in The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 36.

! 237! discursive intertextuality that existed between Adi Dravida intellectual traditions and those of the Dravidian movement. I also situate this within the context of socio- political change in Singapore.

In the lead up to independence and in the early years of its consolidation, the Singaporean state had yet to develop an apparatus of ethno-cultural socialisation through the centralisation of vernacular and second language education. In this formative period, the state was also dependent upon ethnic organisations to aid in the process of promoting ethno-cultural identities that were conducive to ‘inter-racial’ harmony. Enhanced by this project, the Tamil Reform movement was well placed to provide a template upon which early definitions of Tamil identity in the public sphere of independent Singapore was based. Still ideologically moored to the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu, Singaporean Tamil reform organisations articulated a Tamil identity that was progressive, egalitarian, and casteless, and was not tied to religious affiliation but was based solely on language. The widespread internalisation of this identity narrative provided former untouchable Tamils with a publically acknowledged identity that erased caste distinctions and the primary basis for past prejudices directed against them.

By contrast, a comparison with the Dravidian movement and its political off-shoots in contemporary Tamil Nadu reveal that despite egalitarian rhetoric and the ideological legacy of the Self Respect Movement, positive outcomes for Dalit Tamils have been limited and caste identities have not only persisted but have strengthened in response to the politicisation of caste in Indian politics.2 Therefore it is clear that Tamil ethnic identity in Singapore came to provide a means for transcending caste, but only in conjunction with a range of larger structural changes that occurred within the country, the region and as a result of the changing relationships that migrants had with both India and Singapore. I argue that Tamil reformers in Singapore were able to articulate a specific vision of Tamil ethnicity that received patronage from the state. This was enabled by the conscious decision of these reformers and activists to distance themselves from the and articulate a Tamil ethnicity in terms !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 2 Christophe Jaffrelot provides a concise historical overview of Dalit politicisation within Indian politics, focusing on the context behind the rise of the Bahujan Samaj Party in UP during the 1980s and 1990s. Christophe Jaffrelot, “Caste and Politics,” India International Centre Quarterly 37, no. 2 (2010): 94-116.

! 238! that were more compatible with the multi-racial agenda of Singaporean nation- building. Former untouchables, aware of the possibilities and circumstances that were accompanying approaching decolonisation and a new sense of territorial belonging, embraced this unified Tamil identity, abandoning the attempt at uplifting their communities by articulating a separate untouchable subjectivity.

Racial Policies and the Singaporean State

Post-independence Singapore has been marked by an intrusive system of governmentality aimed at producing prescribed ethnic subjectivities amongst the citizenry through a range of socialisation processes. After independence in 1965 Indians who chose to remain in Singapore, like other members of the diaspora in many decolonising regions of the former British Empire, had to also navigate through radical discursive interventions to find a place in existing identity narratives. In Singapore, the state-sponsored model of multi-racial citizenship, and its association with meritocratic principles, greatly hastened the decline of caste identities amongst new Indian citizens who readily identified with these newly promoted national values.

This was partly because the Indian community in Singapore had to come to terms with being a racial minority amongst a citizenry numerically dominated by the Chinese within Singapore itself, and by Malay communities in the wider region.3 Given this situation, and the resulting insecurities that attended it, it is hardly surprising that an academic survey conducted in Singapore in the early 1970s found that the Indian community in Singapore contained the highest percentage of

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 3 Singapore was briefly part of the Malaysian Federation in 1963 that encompassed most of former British Malaya before it was ejected from the Federation in 1965. This political separation resulted in the formation of the Malaysian and Singaporean nations states. Prior to this period, the final borders of what would eventually emerge as Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore were by no means clearly determined. “Dato Onn Visualises Evolution of a Single State of Malaysia: Comprising Malaya, Indonesia etc.,” Indian Daily Mail, January 27, 1951, 5. In the immediate post-war period the existing Chinese and Indian character of Malayan society was also under threat from policy planners who did not want Malaya “to become a province of either China or India” instead favouring labour migration from the Indonesian archipelago where potential migrants were linguistically and religiously similar to the native Malay population. File Note, anon., n.d. (C. 1945), National Archives of India, Ministry of External Affairs and Commonwealth Relations, Overseas Section II, 43-44-OS, quoted in Sunil S. Amrith, Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants (London: Harvard University Press, 2013), 214.

! 239! respondents amongst the major ethnic groups who reported a strong belief in racial equality, and who rejected the notion of hereditary racial superiority, implying a rejection of the key notions underpinning the caste system as well.4 This was reflected most clearly in the breakdown of former public boundaries of separation that were previously manifested in caste-based temple entry rules and the division of Indian enclaves into touchable and untouchable zones. By the early post-independence phase of Singapore’s history, public displays of caste prejudice were simply not compatible with a professed belief in the egalitarian and meritocratic principles that were promoted by the early Singaporean state, upon which the Indian community depended for access to an equitable future as a racial minority within a larger citizenry.

There continued for a time to be a discrepancy between public renunciations of caste and private practices. Caste continued to be manifest for a time in limited ways that were largely confined to the private sphere, mostly in terms of marriage, although this too did not last beyond the 1970s.5 In terms of marriage, the educational status and wealth of an individual increasingly was seen by many to be of far greater importance than an individual’s caste.6 By the late 1970s, caste has lost its earlier function as a means by which to order social relations in the workplace, as well as in everyday religious and cultural interactions amongst Tamil Singaporeans. The deliberate and conspicuous inclusion of minorities into the normative composition of the national body in Singapore has also arguably reinforced the internalisation of meritocracy amongst Indians. This is in contrast to examples of other overseas Indian communities in which traditional values and caste are often strengthened as a result of insularity or as a reaction to the perceived exclusion of the community from a normative national culture.7

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 4 John A. MacDougall, “Birth of a Nation: National Identification in Singapore,” Asian Survey 16, no.6 (June 1976): 512, 520. MacDougall remarked that the “strongest abstract egalitarianism” was “clearly found” among the Indians. Ibid., 520. 5 Mani, “Changing Caste-Structure,” 180-1. 6 S/o Pakirisamy, Acc No. 000081, Reel: 28, Oral History Centre, NAS. 7 For example, today Dalit Solidarity Network branches exist in , , the and the , and serve as an example of the contemporary continuation of caste discrimination in Indian diasporas worldwide. A report published by the Dalit Solidarity Network UK in 2006, estimated that 50,000 self-identified Dalits live in the UK and are subject to continuing caste-based discrimination from other Indian communities. Gina Borbas, David Haslam and Balram Sampla, “No Escape: Caste Discrimination in the UK, Dalit Solidary Network UK Report,” 2006, 4-5, accessed January 1, 2014, http://dsnuk.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/No-Escape-Report-Caste-in-the-UK.pdf. For more information about the contemporary Dalit diaspora see Vivek Kumar, “Understanding Dalit Diaspora,” Economic and Political Weekly 39, no.1 (2004): 114-6.

! 240!

The erosion of caste in Singapore was also accompanied by the development of new discourses about race and ethnicity that have continued to be a contemporary feature of the way that the People’s Action Party (PAP) government has attempted to order and govern Singapore’s ethnic pluralism to this day. The consolidation of ethnic identities into normative categories has been one defining feature of this policy. Typically, housing policies, annual censuses, statistical information and community welfare initiatives are centred on the “Chinese, Malay, Indian and Other” or “CMIO” categories of race that are applied to every citizen on a nationally issued identity card. 8 Chua Beng Huat has argued that government sponsored activities have contributed to the impression that racial “cultures” are frozen in fixed and discrete traditions, race itself being “thematized” and “insinuated” on the population as a salient phenomenon, in order to justify particular methods of social discipline and control.9 For much of Singapore’s history as a nation-state, the highlighting of racial difference has been accompanied by a disavowal of syncretism and hybridity between racial categories, as highlighted by Chua. It has also been accompanied by the playing down of the heterogeneity contained within each racial category, as emphasised by the state.10

Officially, the ethno-cultural diversity contained amongst the Indian population in Singapore has been streamlined and a normative Indian identity associated with the “Indian” category in Singapore has emerged. Scholars have often commented that a normative identity based on Tamil culture and ethnicity used to symbolically represent individuals falling within the wider Indian ‘racial’ category.11 This has manifested itself in many ways, including in representations of Tamils in official multiculturalism campaigns, and the enshrining of Tamil as one of four national

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 8 For an analysis of the CMIO categories in Singapore and their effects on the attempted homogenisation of ‘racial’ differences in Singapore, refer to Chua, “Culture, Multiracialism,” 186–94. Since 1 January 2011, the Singapore government has introduced double-barrelled race options for the registration of children born to parents of different ‘races’. See Singapore Government Immigration and Checkpoints Authority, “Greater Flexibility with Implementation of Double-Barreled Race Option from 1st January 2011,” December 29, 2010, accessed March 15, 2011, http://www.ica.gov.sg/news_details.aspx?nid=12443. 9 Chua, “Culture, Multiracialism,” 190. 10 Ibid., 186-7. 11 Ibid., 190; Sharon Siddique, “Singaporean Identity,” in Management of Success: The Moulding of Modern Singapore, eds. Kernial Singh Sandhu and Paul Wheatley (Singapore: Institute of South East Asian Studies, 1989), 570

! 241! languages and the “race-language” of the Indian community, despite the ethno- linguistic diversity contained within it. 12 State funding for a Tamil language newspaper, radio station and television channel is also used to demonstrate that all of the “races” of Singapore receive equal levels of patronage from the government.

There are many reasons why Tamil language and Tamil cultural symbols have been utilised as signifiers for the wider Indian community in Singapore. The most commonly cited rationale is the relative numerical dominance of the Tamil community amongst Indians for most of the island’s modern history.13 The political importance of Tamil leaders who were enthusiastic about the promotion of the Tamil language and cultural identity grew significantly in the post-war period as a result of increasing democratisation in Singapore after the enactment of the Rendel Constitution of 1955. With the introduction of voting rights, power began to shift from English-educated Indian elites to Tamil reformist leaders, who had much better access to grassroots networks and trade unions and were in a stronger position to influence public opinion.14 After independence, although the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) embarked on a vigorous campaign to create a new cohesive national identity, it sought the support of communal leaders and began to absorb ethno- linguistic organisations into its growing grassroots network. The Tamil Representative Council, the Singapore Dravida Kazhagam and the Singapore Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam had close links with the PAP. Members of the SDMK, many of whom felt that the ideology of the early PAP was similar to that of the DMK, actively !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 12 Chua, “Culture, Multiracialism,” 190. A. Mani has written a detailed account of the development of PAP support for the Tamil language. He highlights that Devan Nair, a PAP-linked labour union leader at the time, supported the promotion of Tamil as a ‘link language’, connecting Indians to their cultural heritage. This resulted in a brief “Tamil renaissance” from 1975, when old and new Tamil cultural organisations were revitalised. He argues that the government focus on Tamil was also linked to the promotion of Mandarin as a link language to preserve Chinese cultural heritage and was part of much larger social engineering attempts that stemmed from policy initiatives outlined by papers such as the Goh Report (1978) on bilingual education. A. Mani, “Indians in Singapore Society,” 800, 803. 13 Except for a brief period in the early 19th century when penal transportation resulted in a more even distribution of Indians from various parts of India, Tamils have been the single largest ethnic Indian group within the Indian community, at one point making up 86.6 percent of the total Indian population in Singapore. McNair, Prisoners, 88, 122; Mereweather, Census 1891, 46. In 2010 Tamil-speakers made up around 54.2 percent of the entire resident Indian community and still form an ethno-linguistic majority, despite a dramatic decline due to the recent growth of other Indian ethnic groups from immigration. Census of Population 2010 Statistical Release 1: Demographic Characteristics, Education, Language and Religion, (Singapore: Singapore Department of Statistics, 2010), 31, accessed 14 March 2011, http://www.singstat.gov.sg/publications /publications_and_papers/cop2010/census10_stat_release1.html 14 Latha d/o Sinasamy highlights that Tamils in Malaya were involved in widespread labour union unrest and trade union activity in the immediate postwar period. D/o Sinasamy, “Tamil Malar,” 10.

! 242! lent support to PAP campaigns during election periods.15 Certain members of the PAP were also members of these two organisations or had close relations with these organisations.16 One scholar has convincingly suggested that the proximity of these interest groups to the ruling party facilitated the formulation of policies that favoured the Tamil-speaking sections of the Indian community.17

It is clear that Lee Kuan Yew, the first Prime Minister of Singapore, was personally aware of how closely many Tamils in Singapore in the 1960s identified with the discourses about Tamil ethnicity that were promoted by the Dravidian movement, and how strongly they felt about the Tamil language. He personally attended a speech given by C.N. Annadurai in Jalan Besar Stadium in Singapore in 1965 that was enthusiastically attended by thousands of Tamils.18 Annadurai, a former follower of Periyar, was the leader of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, and two years later would become the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu when the DMK came to power in 1967. Sunanda K. Datta-Ray, at a speech given during the launch of his book Looking East to Look West, commented on the influence of C.N Annadurai on Lee Kuan Yew. He remarked that Lee Kuan Yew had wanted to see Annadurai’s impact on the crowd. After listening to his speech which was delivered in Tamil - a language Lee did not understand - Lee was reported to have remarked that Annadurai had “conquered Athens and Sparta in one go”, indicating his assessment of the crowd’s enthusiasm.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 15 M. P. Samy, interview by author, January 29, 2011. The SDMK actively supported the PAP during the party’s 1959 election campaign. V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 31, 2011. Latha d/o Sinasamy argues that SDMK members were attracted by the mass-based, multi-racial and democratic nature of the PAP and felt that it shared similar ideals with the DMK, but these are not specified. It is possible that her interviewees may have been referring to the democratic socialism with which the early PAP branded itself. 16 These included PAP MPs S.V. Lingam , P. Govindasamy, G. Kandasamy and S. Raju. DMK leaders like K.K. Narayanasamy lent strong support to the PAP during election campaigns. M. S. Veerappan the general secretary of the SDMK between 1966 and 1980 was also a member of the PAP. His predecessor P.T Rajan was likewise a supporter of the PAP. M P Samy, interview with author, December 18, 2011; M. Subramaniam, interview with author, January 24, 2012. 17 D/o Sinasamy, “Tamil Malar,” 14. 18 M. Subramaniam, interview with author, January 24, 2012. A video recording of Datta-Ray’s comments are available online, http://www.firstpost.com/topic/person/c-n-annadurai-9-of-17- influence-of-c-n-annadurai-on-lee-kuan-yew-suna-video-Weqs0BX2Ud0-92927-1.html.

! 243! (IMAGE REMOVED)

Figure 9. A staged photo of Lee Kuan Yew and C.N. Annadurai taken during the latter’s visit to Singapore in 1965.19 Behind them is situated a flag of the Malaysian Federation (partially obscured and possibly later cropped intentionally) situated above a flag of Singapore. During the time of Annadurai’s visit, Singapore had not yet been expelled from the Federation.

The PAP government’s awareness of the extent of Tamil ethnic identification in Singapore made it politically expedient to privilege the Tamil language as the “race language” of the Indian minorities in Singapore and to continue to grant it the status of an official language. The streamlining and homogenisation of race with regards to the Indians in Singapore whilst allowing Tamil to gain a special status, has also had an impact on definitions of Tamil ethnicity. Previous lines of separation that existed amongst Tamil migrants in colonial Singapore through the expression of regional sub- ethnic identity and caste have waned as a result of, amongst other things, a Tamil language educational syllabus that focuses on selective aspects of Tamil history; as well as literary canons and cultural symbols that present a bounded and unified representation of Tamil linguistic identity and contain elisions about caste and untouchability in the past as well as regional and religious identities.20 Much of this negotiated identity was a continuation of the efforts of the Tamil Reform Association to articulate Tamil identity after the Second World War.

Tamil Reform and Tamil Ethnic Identity Assertion, 1948-1965

After the end of the Japanese Occupation, the Indian Association in Singapore, though still a prominent entity, was fast becoming a spent force in terms of social

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 19 Photo accession number: 2007-001730-NAS, Media image number: 20080000051 – 0108, NAS. 20 After 1982, Singapore’s Ministry of Education began producing its own Tamil textbooks. Prior to this textbooks were imported from Tamil Nadu or privately produced by individuals. Subramanian Thinnappan, personal communication with the author, January 13, 2011. In the first few decades after the end of the Second World War, the cultural focus of Tamil language education was shaped by Tamil Reformist groups as well as educational developments in Tamil Nadu that were also shaped by the cultural agendas of .

! 244! outreach and community activity.21 Being a largely political rather than a cultural construct, the pan-Indianism that the Association fought hard to promote amongst the Indians in Malaya also rapidly dissipated after Indian independence was achieved in 1947, despite the efforts of members to retain the unity achieved during the occupation.22 The Malayan Indian Congress (in 1963 renamed the Malaysian Indian Congress) emerged in 1946 and became a political entity when British authorities attempted to establish a Malayan Union. During that time it became a minority partner in a coalition with the United Malay National Organisation (UMNO) and eventually entered into the ruling coalition that continues to hold power in Malaysia today. With its primary focus on electoral politics and Malaysian independence, its cultural influence in Singapore was limited.

In contrast, Tamil reformers whose programmes had been more narrowly restricted to community development and the cultural promotion of the Tamil language and Tamil culture filled the gap in grassroots leadership. They began to quickly gain social prominence and prestige during the post-war period, becoming widely recognised as leaders of the Tamil community in Singapore. Prominent Tamils began referring to Sarangapany as Thamizhavel or “Tamil leader” and he began to be venerated by the lower middle class from the 1950s.23

Sarangapany used this status to vigorously promote a confident and exclusionary Tamil cultural identity. In 1947, he began publicly questioning the right of the non- Tamil dominated MIC to represent the Tamil majority.24 In 1952 Sarangapany and

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 21 The Malayan Indian Congress (later known as the Malaysian Indian Congress) was initially formed by members of Malayan Indian Associations and would continue to survive and retain relevance in Malaysia by entering a ruling coalition with the United Malay National Organisation (UMNO). Today it is still part of the ruling Barisan National Coalition, headed by UMNO in Malaysia, together with another race-based political entity, the Association and several interest-based parties and groupings. Netto, Passage of Indians, 161. 22 An Interim Committee was formed in 1946 to look into the creation of a new Pan-Malayan Indian Organisation to ensure unity and take charge of community affairs. A memorandum issued by the committee noted the independence movement had “left a legacy of united action, heroic deeds, stupendous sacrifices and awakened consciousness” and that the Indian community needed to learn to “harness the great power that was generated by the Indian Independence Movement” and utilize it in promoting the various interests of Indians in Malaya. “Draft Proposals of Pan-Malayan Indian Organisation,” Indian Daily Mail, July 22, 1946, 3. 23 D/o Sinasamy, “Tamil Malar,” 13. 24 Sarangapany continued to criticise the MIC through his newspapers, while the rival Nesan newspaper supported it. In 1956, successfuly Sarangapany campaigned for a new President of the MIC, VT Sambathan, a Tamil. D/o Sinasamy, “Tamil Malar,” 13.

! 245! other Tamil leaders formed the Tamil Representative Council that absorbed fifty-six reform-minded and Dravidianist Tamil organisations in Singapore under its helm including a number of organisations that previously functioned as Adi Dravida Sangams. Members of the council began popularizing the slogan “Tamil is our life” in 1955 and claimed to represent the views of all Tamils in Singapore.25

From 1948 to the early years of independence the Tamil Reform Association supported Tamil language education through the creation of the Tamil Education Board, supporting Tamil education at a time when the post-occupation colonial authorities were not prepared to spend limited resources aiding vernacular schools.26 Through this, the TRA considerably expanded its influence. The board was involved in the management and reorganisation of Tamil schools and the unionisation of Tamil teachers. It also organised their salaries and created a standardised curriculum, enhancing the status of the Tamil language as well as harnessing the potential of Tamil education as a socialising tool to propagate the cultural values of the movement.27

Sarangapany consolidated his status as a leader of the Tamils in Singapore during the 1950s and 1960s, increasing his public prominence through fund-raising activities for the community. These included a fund-raising drive to aid in the construction of new premises for the Umar Pulavar Tamil School (functioning from 1946-1982) that was completed in 1960 and was a source of pride to the Tamil community. The school was named after a 17th century Tamil Muslim poet and can be read as a symbol of the Tamil reformist focus on language as the key marker of ethnicity and of the refusal to incorporate religious components into definitions of Tamil identity. The TRA consciously attempted to break the race-language-religion nexus that linked Tamils with Hinduism, and was a remnant of colonial classificatory tropes and which !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 25 Elias, Thamizhavel Sarangapany, 41; D/o Sinasamy, “Tamil Malar,” 12. 26 Elias, Thamizhavel Sarangapany, 149. 27 For more information on the activities of the board refer to d/o Sinasamy, “Tamil Malar,” 11. Despite improvements brought about by the efforts of the board, Tamil education in Singapore continued to suffer from a lack of funding and facilities as well as poorly trained and compensated teachers in both English and Tamil schools. ‘Letter from the Director of Education, R.E. Ince to Secretary, Singapore English Schools, Tamil Teachers Union, 18th May 1957’, ‘Letter from Hon. Secretary, M. Annamalai, the Singapore English Schools Tamil Teacher’s Union to Mr. Yong Nyuk Lin, Minister of Education, Singapore, 18th June 1959’, ‘Letter from Hon. Sec, Singapore English School Tamil Teachers Union to Perm Sec. Ministry of Education, Singapore, 27th Sep 1958’, Singapore English Schools Tamil Teachers Union, 1362/56, NAS.

! 246! continued to feature in the policies of pre and post-independence Singaporean governments. For example in 1951, the TRA made an unsuccessful request to the governing authorities in Singapore and the Malaya Federation to drop Thaipusam as a public holiday and replace it with the religiously neutral Ponggal harvest festival, which members argued was a more inclusive festival for “all Tamil-speaking people.”28 Tamil Muslims, many of whom were also active members of the Tamil Reform Council enthusiastically supported efforts to foster Tamil unity and promote the Tamil language, and were actively involved in fund raising activities for the Umar Pulavar School.29 The school’s alumni included many individuals who later became active members of Tamil reform and Tamil language organisations.30

The Tamil Reform Association and the Tamil Reform Council however were not the only organisations promoting Dravidian Tamil cultural identity. The post-war period saw the emergence of numerous Dravidian organisations in Singapore inspired by the growing strength of the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu during the 1940s, and the fresh arrival of a younger generation of politically and socially conscious Tamil migrants. Sunil Amrith has described the continued flow of Tamil migrants between India and Malaya from 1946 to 1947 when porous borders still existed before immigration controls tightened considerably in 1948 in response to counter- insurgency efforts aimed at combating communism in Malaya.31 For the first time large numbers of locally born Tamils were also becoming socially active in these organisations, facilitating what would become an increasingly Malayan outlook. In 1946, at the suggestion of Periyar, Dravida Kazhagams began emerging in Singapore and Penang, named after the Dravida Kazhagam party that he formed in 1944.32 The following year the numerous Dravida Kazhagams were brought under the All Malaya Central Dravida Kazhagam, which maintained close ties with Madras, and began

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 28 “Tamils to raise funds for Malayan Varsity: Holiday asked for Ponggal instead of Thaipusam,” Indian Daily Mail, February 22, 1951, 5. The 1950s also coincided with the revival of Malayan Hinduism, which was closely allied to the revival of Tamil culture although tensions existed between the secular Tamil reformists and followers of Tamil Saivism. For more information on the post-war Hindu revival in Singapore and the evolution of Hindu identity in Singapore, refer to Arasaratnam, Indians in Malaysia, 166-8; Vineeta Sinha, “Unpacking the Labels “Hindu” and “Hinduism” in Singapore,” Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 25, no.2 (1991): 139-60; Rajesh Rai, “Homogenisation and Fragmentation,” 3-17. 29 Elias, Thamizhavel Sarangapany, 27; Sellapa Ramanathan, interview by author, February 16, 2011. 30 M. P. Samy, interview by author, December 18, 2011. 31 Amrith, Crossing the Bay of Bengal, 217-9. 32 Arasaratnam, Indians in Malaysia, 129; Arooran, “Tamil Renaissance,” 13.

! 247! producing a number of publications.33 Sinnapah Arasaratnam argues that the Dravida Kazhagams in Malaya had a large role to play in shifting the attention of the Tamil public away from northern-centric Congress politics, towards developments in Tamil Nadu: “the eyes of the people were turned from Gandhi and Nehru to Ramasamy Naicker and C.N Annadurai, from Tagore to , from Delhi to Madras.”34

When C.N. Annadurai split from Periyar’s Dravida Kazhagam to form the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in 1954, his supporters and admirers formed a Singapore Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (SDMK) that remained active into the 1970s.35 The SDMK was particularly attractive to younger activists, with many leaving the TRC and SDK to join what they viewed as a more dynamic organisation.36 These groups did not always maintain a cordial relationship, with petty disputes and disagreements often occurring that centred around various leaders and personalities, although they all worked towards a common set of goals and would close ranks when it came to community endeavours such as the raising of funds for the Umar Pulavar School. These organisations attracted mostly the Tamil-educated working class. As with the TRA of the 1930s, many members of these organisations were also drawn from Adi Dravida groups. The SDK was particularly popular amongst municipal cleaners and labourers and many also later joined the SDMK.37

From 1952, Sarangapany also began organising an annual Tamils’ Festival. These annual festivals received widespread media attention and were attended by thousands in Singapore and Malaya and even spread further afield to Indonesia and Thailand.38 The stated aim of the festivals was to bring together Tamil Hindus, Christians, Muslims and encourage them to identify themselves as one Tamil community. As one

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 33 Arasaratnam, Indians in Malaysia, 129 34 Ibid., 129-30. 35 A major reason for Annadurai’s split with Periyar and the formation of the DMK was Annadurai’s desire to take part in electoral politics. The DMK came to power in Tamil Nadu in 1967, with Annadurai as its Chief Minister. Jean-Luc Racine and Josiane Racine, “Dalit Identities and the Dialectics of Oppression and Emancipation in Changing India: The Tamil Case and Beyond,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 18, no.1 (1998): 8. 36 S/o Palaiyan, “Biography of A.C. Suppiah,” 51. 37 M. Subramaniam, interview by author, January 24, 2012. 38 Mani, “Indians in Singapore Society,” 796.

! 248! Tamil newspaper put it, the festivals aimed at bringing together “Arumuguam, Anthony and Abdullah.”39

The SDMK also began origanising parallel annual Ponggal festivals for Tamils that were very popular. In addition to other cultural programmes, the TRA and SDMK organised festivals commemorating the classical Tamil poet , who had been appropriated as a symbol of Tamil cultural identity by Dravidian nationalists in the 1930s. An interviewee and former member of the Singapore Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam recalled one such event, which took the form of procession between Farrer Park and Pasir Panjang in the early 1960s in Singapore. The central element of the precession was an individual who, whilst riding on top of an elephant, carried a statue of Thiruvalluvar, an increasingly familiar image to Tamils overseas. He was followed by a procession of people shouting “Thamizh vazhga” or “long live Tamil.”40

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 39 D/o Sinasamy, “Tamil Malar,” 38. 40 M. Subramaniam, interview by author, January 24, 2012.

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Figure 10. 1958 poster for Valluvar Vizhar (Valluvar Festival), a celebration held in honour of the poet Thiruvalluvar, organised by the Tamil Reform Association in Singapore. The cross-legged image of Thiruvalluvar, a common depiction of the poet is featured at the top of the poster.

Such public events were a powerful performance of Tamil linguistic solidarity, which, in terms of public events in Singapore in the period, had no ‘all India’ equivalents. They did a great deal to facilitate a sense of the growing importance of language as a

! 250! primary component of ethnic identity over other markers amongst the Tamil community.

Organisations like the TRC and the Singapore Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, which were influenced by Dravidian ideology, became the most influential organisations in Singaporean Tamil society between the end of the war and the late 1970s. The rise of Tamil reformers, enabled by the dominance of their newspapers and control of Tamil education and welfare initiatives, corresponded to the decline in the social influence of Tamil conservatives. As covered in a previous chapter, these interests had once posed a serious challenge to the agenda of Dravidian reformers in the 1930s and had attempted to define normative Tamil ethnicity on very different terms that included references to Hinduism. Tamil reform organisations were actively involved in raising the living standards and education levels of Tamils, and gradually shaped the identity of many Tamils across at least two generations. The ideological emphasis of newspapers, cultural programmes and the shaping of the Tamil language education curriculum via a network of Tamil teachers, A. Mani argues, became a “new catalyst to community orientation.”41

During the 1950s, the widespread popularity of Tamil films from Madras in Singapore and Malaya also contributed to the growth and propagation of the reformist agenda amongst the wider Tamil community in Singapore.42 during this period was closely linked with the Dravidian reform movement, and was used by scriptwriters, directors and actors as a medium of propagating messages of social reform.43 Many of these individuals, including C.N. Annadurai, M.G. Ramachandran, M. Karunanidhi, Sivaji Ganesan and S.S. Rajendran were active and would later become active in Dravidian political leadership in Tamil Nadu. In this way, although political links between India and Singapore became weakened in the 1950s, Indian cultural influences remained strong. Together with reformist drama troupes, the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 41 Mani, “Indians in Singapore Society,” 798. 42 Amrith, Crossing the Bay of Bengal, 239. 43 For a more detailed study of the links between Tamil cinema and Dravidian politics refer to Selvaraj Velayutham, “Introduction: the Cultural History and Politics of South Indian Tamil Cinema,” in Tamil Cinema: The Cultural Politics of India’s Other Film Industry, ed. Selvaraj Velayutham (New York: Routledge, 2008), 7-8; Robert L. Hardgrave, “Politics and the Film in Tamil Nadu: the Stars and the DMK,” in Velautham, Tamil Cinema, 59-76.

! 251! popularity of Tamil Cinema helped to reinforce Dravidian social messages as a normative aspect of popular culture.

From Adi Dravidas to Tamils

Understanding the intellectual histories of identity discourses remains an important component of understanding the ways in which untouchable Tamil migrants attempted to challenge caste prejudice directed against their communities overseas. The act of reinventing the myths, histories and taxonomies of caste remains a important strategy employed by caste groups to raise their social status, and in the case of Dalit groups, a means for resisting oppression or gaining a comparative social advantage over other Dalit groups and persecuted minorities. In an effort to gain group mobility, contemporary Dalit groups expend considerable effort in the struggle to obtain not just greater access to government welfare, resources and political capital but also the intellectual resources to engage in symbolic production; to construct and gain external recognition for caste narratives that encompass the values and goals of their community and resist discrimination. Caste groups construct affirmative micro- discourses about their particular caste groups that can be then used as a basis to challenge or even reproduce, in an advantageous manner, the over-arching cultural discourses and value systems within which their initial disadvantage is embedded and normalised.44 These practices, which entail the effort to create histories, practices, myths and narratives, to invent or subvert conceptual binaries, or to simply divest them of power, and to then gain external recognition of these ideas, therefore remains

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 44 This process has arguably intensified in recent years with the atomization of Dalit political movements into political parties that concentrate on representing regionally specific caste groups that are often in competition for limited resources with other Scheduled Caste (SC) or Other Backward Caste (OBC) groups. Caste groups have also often focus on challenging their position within a regional system of hierarchy rather than challenging the philosophical basis of the caste system itself, thereby reproducing the values inherent within the dominant discourses on caste. It is most often communities in direct competition with other caste groups occupying a similar position on the social scale, rather than higher caste groups, who adopt this strategy. Manuela Ciotti has done an interesting study on identity discourses amongst the low caste Chamars of Manupur Village. She argues for the importance of “investing” in the past as a strategy within low caste identity politics and also how, as much as dalit groups engage with high caste traditions to challenge the derogatory discourses aimed against them, they have at the same time powerfully internalised the values contained within them. Manuella Ciotti, Retro Modern India: Forging the Low-Caste Self (Routledge: London, 2010), 39.

! 252! a staple feature of contemporary sociological work on caste. Ursula Rao and Assa Doron have referred to these practices as “mythic repositioning.”45

Untouchable immigrants’ attempts from the early 1920s to combat discrimination and prejudice in Singapore were similarly accompanied by the creation and dissemination of discourses about the ethno-histories of untouchable castes, myths about the origins of caste prejudice and new ontologies which contained the aspirations of the community. These attempts at mythic repositioning were often constructed around the basis of their syncretic intertextuality with other dominant or better-established discourses, such as Gandhi’s ethical formulations and ideas about “Harijans” or the Dravidian ideological conception of an original egalitarian Dravidian race of inhabitants in South India. The modes of symbolic production that were utilised, the choice of tropes, the way aspects of certain symbols were selected or excluded, reveal an untouchable agency that was cognisant of the nexus between power, knowledge production and social capital. The fact that untouchable discourses that aimed to provide empowerment and self-respect were constructed in reference to other discourses reveals an understanding by untouchables of the limits operating on their capacity to create affirmative discourses based on their societal disempowerment and also indicates the deployment of creative strategies to overcome that.

After the formation of Periyar’s Self Respect Movement in 1925, within Dravidian ideology, specific jati identities and taxonomies were seen as remnants of a primitive and atavistic social system of caste, something to be eventually replaced by new identities in a nation constituted by language and culture. Debates about the retention of caste surnames featured extensively in India, Singapore and other parts of Malaya and increasingly from the 1930s onward, as individuals who identified with the Dravidian movement began to argue that caste names should be dropped entirely to remove a public signifier of caste difference.46

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 45 Assa Doron and Ursula Rao, “From the Edge of Power: The Cultural Politics of Disadvantage in South Asia,” Asian Studies Review 33, no. 4 (December 2009): 425. 46 Some examples of these debates in Malayan newspaper articles include: “Caste Names,” Straits Times, September 25, 1933, 5; “Caste Names,” Straits Times, September 18, 1933, 6; “Why Encourage Caste System?,” Straits Times, June 22, 1957, 9; “Spotlight on Caste Titles, by a Malayan Indian,” Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, March 17, 1951, 3; “Sundram Iyer Cup,” Straits Times, November 3, 1952, 6.

! 253! In seeking a more holistic understanding of the relationship between Adi Dravidas and the Dravidian movement in Singapore, it is worth noting that for the Adi Dravidas, the decision to drop separate subjectivities and adopt a ‘Tamil identity’ was a conscious one that occurred only in the 1950s. This marked a departure from previous attempts to uplift the community through the mobilisation of specific caste groups and caste categories. Within this kind of discourse the continued use of “Adi Dravida” in Malaya as a term of self designation instead of “Dravidian” or “Tamil” must be understood an act of social agency that requires greater scrutiny.

During the mid 1950s, the all-Malaya Federation of Adi Dravida Associations met in Singapore at the Victoria Memorial Hall and passed a resolution to abandon the Adi Dravida label and simply refer to themselves as Tamils.47 These influential former- untouchable leaders, for the first time, began to see their futures in what was then slated to be a Malayan Federation, rather than in India. Krishnan, a respected Malayan Adi Dravida leader as well as several Singapore Adi Dravida leaders like Bhuminathan, the chairman of the Singapore Adi Dravida Association and Doraisamy, the General Secretary of the Singapore Harbour Board Labour Union, supported the motion. Soundara Rajan, one of the founders of the Malayan Indian Congress, who was invited to witness the conference, advised those present that they would be better off securing material and educational resources if they abandoned attempts to mobilise as a caste group and simply referred to themselves as “Indians.”48

Soon after, Adi Dravida Sangams in Singapore began changing their names by dropping references to “Adi Dravida”, replacing it with the word “Tamil” rather than “Indian.” Others adopted symbols of the reform movement or the names of leaders within the Singaporean Tamil reform movement. 49 Tamil schools, originally started

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 47 Soundara Rajan, Acc. No. 000845, Reel: 20, Oral History Centre, NAS. 48 Ibid. 49 One example of this was the Mannarkudi Thiruthiraputhi Adi Dravida Sangam that was founded in the 1920s and until the 1990s was located at a shophouse in 221 Syed Alwi Road in Singapore. The members of the association changed its name to Thamizhavel Narppani Mandram after one of the founders of the Singapore Tamil Reform Movement, Thamizhavel G. Sarangapany. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 24, 2011. Thamizhmaraiyan was at one stage the head of the association. Another example was the Karambakudi Thiruvalluvar Valarchi Kazhagam, which was previously called the Karambakudi Adi Dravida Sangam.

! 254! primarily for the children of Adi Dravidas, were also similarly named after symbols of the Tamil reform movement like the classical Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar.50

However in the years prior to the occupation, Adi Dravidas in Singapore were reluctant to do away with separate subjectivities. This highlights the fact that a separate Tamil untouchable consciousness existed within the community in the 1930s, despite their participation in the Dravidian Tamil movement during this period. Untouchables were initially unwilling to fully abandon their distinct identities. Given the very specific socio-historic forces that shaped their communities, and by extension their identities, untouchable subjects had an acute awareness of their unique subjectivities as well as the particular nature of their social struggles. As such, while desirous of the social and political equality offered by Dravidian Tamil ideology, untouchables were nonetheless ambivalent about submerging their identities, and the unique struggles through which they emerged, within a larger ethno-linguistic movement. This underlying ambivalence lends us a much deeper understanding of the complexities in the relationship between the Tamil Reform Movement and Tamil untouchable migrants.

The debate at the third annual All-Malaya Adi Dravida conference of 1936, mentioned in chapter four, illustrates how although a sizeable minority of Adi Dravidas at the time wished to drop the “Adi Dravida” label and identify themselves simply as Tamils, the majority of the community’s leaders and representatives opposed the move.51 During the 1930s although Adi Dravidas were increasingly drifting towards the Periyar’s Self Respect movement, many supported the Congress and Gandhi’s efforts at uplifting the “Harijans.” Eugene Irschick and Raj Sekhar Basu have highlighted the “messianic” image that Gandhi gained amongst Adi Dravidas in Devakottai, Madurai and Tinnevelly, during a tour of the area that brought these groups closer to Congress ideology.52 These areas were sites of bitter conflicts between Kallar landlords and Adi Dravida agricultural labourers. Basu highlights that

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 50 Examples include the Thiruvalluvar Tamil School in Joo Chiat, Aravindar Tamil School in Outram, the Saingaravellanar Thamizhpadasalai in Bukit Timah, and the Vasughi Tamil School located in Lorong Lalat and named after the wife of Thiruvalluvar. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 31, 2012. 51 “Disorderly Scenes at Conference,” The Singapore Free Press Mercantile Advisor, 3. 52 Eugene F. Irschick, Tamil Revivalism in the 1930s (Madras: Cre-A, 1986), 170, quoted in Raj Sekhar Basu, Nadanar’s Children, 306.

! 255! at the same time, Adi Dravidas who supported the untouchable leader Rettamalai Srinivasan opposed Gandhi’s use of the term “Harijan” and the Congress’ disavowal of separate electorates as laid down in the of 1932. In Singapore and the rest of Malaya there was no overwhelming consensus on the course that the identity politics of the Adi Dravida communities should take.

Even within the early Self Respect Movement there was considerable ambivalence in acknowledging Adi Dravidas as being part of the same group as non-Brahmin Dravidians. Instead, a conceptual distinction continued to be made between “Dravidian” Tamils and “Adi Dravidian” untouchable Tamils, both in Malaya and in India well into the 1930s. Periyar’s Self Respect Movement was characterised by a heavy focus on activities that challenged caste and attacked the practice of untouchability. Despite this and despite his frequent ideological rhetoric against caste, which he portrayed as being something foreign to “Dravidian Tamil” culture, Periyar and other leaders nonetheless often spoke of Adi Dravidas or Tamil untouchables as being a group that was distinct from other Dravidians. In 1929, the same year he visited Malaya, Periyar accepted an invitation to speak at an Adi Dravida Conference held in Siruvathur in India. His comments reveal a tendency to simultaneously refer to the Adi Dravida community as a separate entity while comparing their social struggles with struggles of non-Brahmin Tamils against Brahmin hegemony. By suggesting this equivalence, he revealed a lack of acknowledgment of the unique level of persecution and prejudice suffered by the community:

If I contributed anything to the abolition of untouchability, it is not for just your welfare but for the welfare of everyone. We are only slightly less disadvantaged that you… In our titles we are worse off than you are. You are called Paraiyars and Pallars, but these are occupational names. We are called Sudras, which brings dishonor from birth. The term Paraiyan means that you have your own father and mother, but Sudra means that you are a coarse son of a prostitute, or a hereditary slave, or a man purchased to slavery. I am envious of the Paraiyars… Your caste is outside the Hindu system, whereas in Hinduism there is no one below the Sudra. The Brahmins have created all this using the name of religion. We have to therefore stand against this religion that is used to legitimise the caste system and the god who is said to be behind this religion… We cannot achieve anything without a willingness to struggle and suffer and even give up

! 256! our lives, it is foolishness to think that someone else will come and help you. You must help yourselves.53

Periyar’s suggestion that the term “Sudra” was more degrading than untouchable names like “Pariah” and “Pallar” does not indicate a genuine belief that such a distinction corresponded to the social realities of caste stratification. This was likely a rhetorical attempt to draw broader links between untouchable struggles against prejudice and the efforts of non-Brahmin Tamils to challenge Brahmin privilege in Madras. Consistent with the usual themes and tropes within his oratorical repertoire, Periyar associated caste prejudice with Hinduism and the Brahmin caste, but in this case did so without explicitly mentioning the complicity of other caste groups in the persecution of untouchables. Doing so would have made it difficult to present non- Brahmin Tamils and untouchable Tamils as occupying a similar spectrum of caste- based victimhood. What is interesting is Periyar’s use of the pronouns “you” and “we” and his final exhortation for the community to help itself. This reflects his acknowledgment of the separate subjectivity of untouchable Tamils. In 1925, Periyar had quit the Congress Party and formed the Self Respect Movement, and Adi Dravida associations had already been established in the Madras Presidency for at least three decades and had a history of organisation independent of the Dravidian movement.

Similarly in Singapore, the emergence of Adi Dravida Sangams predated the Tamil Reform Association by a decade. Sinnapah Arasaratnam argues that untouchables were “forced into a consciousness of their identity by the discrimination they encountered and were among the first to come together and form Adi Dravida Sangams in cities and towns like Singapore, Ipoh, Penang, Malacca, and Klang.” 54 Whilst scholars have recently begun to acknowledge the separate and unique history of a distinct Adi Dravida consciousness in India that was manifested in separate organisations and print culture, the means by which the Adi Dravida community aligned itself with the Tamil Reform Movement in Singapore has yet to be explored.55

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 53 “The Deplorable Condition of the Adi Dravidas,” Kudi Arasu, January 16, 1929, 4; translated from Tamil by author. 54 Arasaratnam, Indians in Malaysia, 66. 55 Geetha, “From Panchamars to Dalits,” 117-31. Gnanasigamony Aloysius, “The Vicissitudes of Subaltern Self Identification: A Reading of Tamilan,” in Ritual, Caste and Religion in Colonial South India, eds., Michael Bergunder, Heiko Frese and Ulrike Shroder (Halle: Franckeschen Stiftungen zu Halle, 2010), 238-74; Basu, Nandanar’s Children; K. Velmangai and L. Selvamuthi Kumarasami,

! 257!

By 1940, Periyar explicitly advocated doing away with a separate Adi Dravida identity. In his keynote address at a Justice Party conference in Thiruvarur he argued for the abolishment of the term “Adi Dravida” and any term that made distinctions between untouchable and non-Brahmin Tamils:

In our country there is a division between the Dravidians and the Adi Dravidians. The marginalisation of the Adi Dravidians by the Dravidians is worse than the marginalisation of the Dravidians at the hands of the foreign Aryans. This is a great shame to Dravidian society. Therefore the term Adi Dravidian should be abolished and both groups should be identified as Tamils. All social distinctions between the groups must be abolished until they become one society. This is my wish. These two goals are also the goals of the Justice Party. Abolish distinction by name and well as social differences.56

It is worth noting that Tamil untouchable discourses and mythic traditions of resistance that centred around the notion of untouchable Tamils belonging to the original Dravidian race of inhabitants in South India were not merely derivative of the ideologies and discourses emerging from the non-Brahmin and later the Self Respect Movement. Rather, they have a distinct and long historical tradition in untouchable narratives of resistance that emerged from a unique experience of prejudice, and which filtered down to ground and colour a separate subjectivity amongst untouchables in the twentieth century.

As early as the late 19th century, untouchables in India had begun to realise the importance of gaining acceptance for new self-designations and understandings of their own history when the relationship between the symbolism of invented taxonomies and social capital became evident to these communities. In the closing years of the 19th century, Tamil untouchables petitioned for the official recognition and usage of the term Adi-Dravida (meaning original Dravidians) in reference to their community and lobbied for the prohibition of the word “paraiah” in official

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! “ and Depressed Class Intellectuals’ Print and Press Media in Liberation Struggle in Tamil Nadu,” Indian Streams Research Journal 2, no.12 (January 2013): 2-6. 56 “Adi Dravidas,” Kudi Arasu, August 25, 1940, 3; translated from Tamil by author.

! 258! language.57 The term Adi Dravida was originally used as a respectful variant to specific caste names like Pariah that had taken on highly derogatory connotations in the context of their usage in the everyday speech of higher caste individuals. 58 The term also attracted increasing stigma with its incorporation into the English language as an ethnographic term used to describe all untouchables in India, often with reductively ascribed pejorative connotations, and later as a general description.59 By utilising the term Adi Dravida, untouchable individuals were accessing and appropriating a new Dravidian discourse that emerged in South India after the publication of Robert Caldwell’s A Comparative Grammar as well as the writings of G.U Pope and other linguists and scholars in the 19th century, gave rise to the belief in a distinct and historical Dravidian people, whose inhabitance of the South of India, preceded other Indians, and to whom Tamils belonged.

The presidential address delivered at an Adi Dravida conference in Chidambaram in 1921 is illustrative of some of the common tropes that were mobilised in untouchable renditions of Dravidian mythical histories and of the creative subversion of existing

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 57 Racine and Racine, “Dalit Identities,” 8. As a result of pressure from untouchable groups, around 1914, the Madras legislature banned the use of the words “Paraiyar” and “Panchama” in reference to specific communities and instituted the word “Adi Dravidar” in their place. Aloysius, “Vicissitudes,” 260. The untouchable intellectual, Iyothee Thassar Pandithar, a member of the Nilgiri Dravida Society had sent a petition to the Congress Committee in the Nilgiris, requesting that the derogatory use of the word “Pariah” be criminalised in 1891. Summary of the Petition Sent by the Dravidian Society to the Congress Committee in 1891 in Nilgiri, September 15, 1909, cited in Aloysius, Ayothidasa Sinthanaigal, 184; translated from Tamil by author. 58 Interestingly, the term referenced an idea, which emerged in colonial ethnography between 1830 and 1860, that the lowest castes in India had tribal roots and comprised the original autochthonous inhabitants of the subcontinent. Peter Pels, “The Rise and Fall of the Indian Aborigines: Orientalism, Anglicism, and the Emergence of the Ethnology of India, 1833 to 1969,” in Colonial Subjects: Essays on the Practical History of Anthropology, eds., Peter Pels and Oscar Salemink (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 83. Pels references the work of Susan Bayly and Nicholas Dirks and argues that the racialisation of caste was a direct consequence of this period in which the aborigine was a key area of focus in colonial ethnography. This reinvented conception of caste as race would inform pan- Indian surveys of “tribes and castes” after the 1860s. Ibid. The idea of the Indian aborigine, as Sumit Guha has highlighted, was initially a highly pejorative one. The Indian aborigine was believed by 19th century ethnographers such as John Wilson, to have been subdued, oppressed and subsequently incorporated into the Hindu caste system by northern “Aryan” newcomers to the subcontinent who were more civilized and martial but were weakened through racial admixture with the original inhabitants. Sumit Guha, “Lower Strata, Older Races, and Aboriginal Peoples: Racial Anthropology and Mythical History Past and Present,” The Journal of Asian Studies 57, no.2 (May 1998): 424. 59 In their widely read glossary of Indian words and phrases first published in 1886, Henry Yule and Arthur C. Burnell, described the Pariah as being “low in habits, frequently eating carrion and other objectionable food, and addicted to drink.” They also noted that the term “Pariah” has mistakenly been used to denote all “out-castes” in common English parlance. Henry Yule and Arthur C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive (London: J. Murray, 1903), 678-9.

! 259! regimes of value. Addressing a crowd of over five thousand Adi Dravidas, M.B. Rama Naidu, described pre-existing ideas of aboriginality:

The aborigines- what does the word conjure up in our minds? A set of human beings black generally, uncivilised from our stand point, having no written language of theirs, inhuman in their customs, worshipping fiends and offering animal sacrifices, at one time cannibals, and everything that is repugnant to our ideas of advancement.60

Naidu then went on to challenge this, with a long and elaborate description of the historical lost culture and society of the “aboriginal” Adi Dravidas, subverting the established association between aboriginality and primitivism. He described their society as being “purely democratic” and attributed their degradation to the introduction of Aryan customs such as caste. 61 He criticised the simultaneous veneration of the Adi Dravidian language (Tamil) and mistreatment of Adi Dravidas and stressed that the Adi Dravidian community needed to retain its separate identity and not depend on other Dravidas (Tamils) for support:

The Adi Dravida is a complete ancient community in itself, but has been kept down by its sister communities. The Dravidians though belonging to the same stock, so court the Aryan favour that they will never advance the Adi Dravidian interest… The Dravidas are fighting for their own existence and we are not sure if they can assist the Adi Dravidas separately. They [Adi Dravidas] must have their own representatives in the legislature and the local bodies. They must origanise themselves because no real sympathiser, not even the vain glorious agitators will leave their motor cars and town houses and wade knee deep in filthy mud to their cheri [untouchable village].62

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 60 The Adidravida: His Cult Past & Present & His Outlook, The Presidential Address Delivered by Mr. M.B. Rama Naidu at the Adi Dravida Conference held at Chidambaram on 21 -4- 21 (Chidambaram: A.S. Sahajanandam, 1921), 3, India Office Library, Pamphlets, Vol. 17, P/T185, BL. The size of the crowd and the content of the speech perhaps demonstrate how these ideas were spread amongst low caste and untouchable communities with low levels of literacy and no access to newspapers and publications. 61 Ibid., 29. In many other parts of India, the Adi Hindu movements of the 1920s and 1930s saw other untouchable groups identify themselves as the original inhabitants of their territories, dispossessed and deprived of their past status as a result of the introduction of the Hindu caste system. R. K. Kshirasagar, Dalit Movement in India and its leaders, 1857-1956 (New Delhi: M D Publications, 1994), 410; Gupta, “Feminine, Criminal or Manly?,” 33. 62 “The Adidravida”, 48, 55.

! 260!

The speech also suggests that one of the reasons many Adi Dravida leaders were advocating the maintenance of a distinct and separate identity was the hope of separate electorates and political representation. The speech implicitly criticised non- Brahmin Tamils of non-untouchable castes, revealing a deep mistrust of them. For Tamil untouchables in the Madras Presidency, violence, prejudice and mistreatment often came at the hands of landlords who were from the so-called non-Brahmin group and belonged to castes like the Kallar, Thevar and Vellalar. A turning point in relations between Adi Dravidas and non-Brahmin Tamils came after the establishment of Periyar’s staunchly anti-caste Self Respect Movement, which Adi Dravidas collaborated with and supported in large numbers, realising the benefit of aligning with a mass-based movement.

Gnanasigmony Aloysius has written about the close collaboration that occurred in the 1920s between Adi Dravida newspapers like the Tamilan and Periyar’s Kudi Arasu, but notes that beyond the apparent “camaraderie and collaboration” there was an underlying resentment on the part of the Adi Dravida that accompanied being treated like an “inferior partner” in the struggle against caste.63 Adi Dravidas also noted that newspapers like the Kudi Arasu were not above censoring incidents of non-Brahmin violence against untouchables.64 For many untouchables, the benefits of participating in a mass movement against Brahminism and caste were tempered with the realisation that the specificities of untouchable subalternity risked being diluted.

Yet in the ideological realm, the logic of non-Brahmin Dravidian discourse and its relationship to Adi Dravida intellectual discourses set the movement towards a path of eventually erasing differences between Dravida and Adi Dravida through common critiques of caste and the focus on language as a marker of identity. The discursive roots of both non-Brahmin Tamil writers like Sundaram Pillai and untouchable Tamil writers like Iyothee Thassar lie in the same textual interpretations of specific works of colonial ethnographic writing.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 63 Aloysius, “Vicissitudes,” 270. 64 Ibid.

! 261! Perundevi Srinivasan has demonstrated the impact of 19th century missionary ethnograpers like G.U. Pope and Robert Caldwell on subsequent articulations of Tamil identity. She argues that they introduced a “grid of monolithic dichotomies” in their representations, limiting the pathways available to Tamil leaders for the future articulation of Tamil identity. 65 According to Srinivasan, dichotomies like Dravidian/non-Dravidian, Sanskrit/Tamil, Saivism/ and Brahmin/non- Brahmin, “flattened” the multiplicity inherent in local culture, and glossed over historical syncretism, thus limiting interpretations of Tamil identity by intellectuals to mere derivations of missionary Orientalist discourse.66 This missionary discourse created an unbridgeable “chasm” between the binary terms, encouraging an essentialisation of categories. This imposed identity, Srinivasan argues, left very little room for Tamil agents to emphasise syncretism in their history, introducing a kind of historical determinism in the way modern Tamil identity evolved.

The essentialisation of categories and the common origins and interpretations of colonial ethnography also meant that Adi Dravida discourses and Non-Brahmin discourses developed along a trajectory that resulted in a high degree of inter- textuality and syncretism. Cooperation between Adi Dravidas and the Dravidian movement were greatly facilitated by overlapping binaries, common values like egalitarianism and a similar conception of cultural authenticity and modernity. The discursive similarities also supported the case for merging into a single identity.

In the 1907, Iyothee Thass also began running a newspaper called Oru Paisa Tamilar, which promoted the rights of Pariahs. Iyothee Thass presents one of the earliest examples of a Tamil activist who promoted taxonomical changes that would have seen, at least in the realm of language, the merging of untouchables into broader undifferentiated ethno-linguistic categories that bore no reference to caste. In his newspaper, as in the names of his organisations and in letters in which he expressed his opinions about the matter, Iyothee Thass favoured the term Tamilar over Adi

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 65 Perundevi Srinivasan, “Can We Cross The Chasm? Agency and Orientalist Discourse in the Colonial Tamil Context,” in Reorienting Orientalism, ed. Chandreyee Niyogi (New Delhi: Sage 2006), 234. 66 Ibid, 230.

! 262! Tamilar.67 He also favoured the term Dravida over Adi Dravida, illustrating that the broadening of the Dravidian category and of Tamil ethnicity was first proposed within untouchable discourse. Recent scholarship has suggested that the ideology of the Self Respect Movement was in fact influenced by the earlier discursive contributions of untouchable intellectuals such as Iyothee Thass.68

The ideology that underscored Periyar’s Self Respect Movement demonstrated an increasing radicalisation that increased the discursive proximity between the Self Respect movement and Adi Dravida intellectual resistance to caste prejudice. Periyar rejected Hinduism and the veneration of Saivistic Hindu traditions that older Tamil revivalists, who utilised “Dravidian” tropes and had been represented as being integral to Tamil identity.69 Many cultural symbols that were used by the Self Respect Movement in India and the Tamil Reform movement in Malaya were recognised and continue to be recognised as untouchable symbols by untouchables who were involved in Tamil reform. Arguably, this led to a sense that untouchables were culturally represented within new articulations of Tamil identity.70 These included historical figures such as Nandanar and the poet Thiruvalluvar as well as Thiruvalluvar’s Thirukkural.71

In Malaya, the Tamil Reform Associations had advocated for the end of distinctions between Tamils on the basis of caste and of the adoption of a single “Tamil” identity

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 67 “Adi-Tamilar Appiviruthu Sangam,” September 4, 1907, cited in Gnanasigamony Aloysius ed., Ayothidasa Sinthanaigal, Part 3 (Palayamkottai: Folklore Resources and Research Centre, St. Xavier’s College, 2003), 2; translated from Tamil by author. 68 Aloysius, “Vicissitudes,” 269. Dalit Tamil political parties and their members today are keen to highlight the historical independence of the Adi Dravida intellectual heritage from the Dravidian movement. Today this occurs in a political context in which Dalit Tamils perceive contemporary Dravidian political parties as ignoring the specific social concerns of their community. “A Grasp of the Past,” Tehelka Magazine 4, no. 48, December 15, 2007, accessed December 5, 2013, http://archive.tehelka.com/story_main36.asp?filename=cr151207DALITWINDOW.asp. 69 A.R. Venkatachalapathy, In Those Days There Was No Coffee, Writings in Cultural History (New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2006), 136-7. Elsewhere I have analysed the links between Saivism and early Dravidian ideology that arose as a result of the writings of G.U Pope. Solomon, “Constructing the Dravidian,” 52-69. 70 An interviewee, who was a former head of an Adi Dravida organisation in Singapore, was keen to point out that Thiruvalluvar was an untouchable when discussing the promotion of Thiruvalluvar and the Thirukkural by Periyar. V. Thamizhmaraiyan, interview by author, December 31, 2011. 71 For a more detailed account of the various versions of the Valluvar myth and the identity politics behind them, particularly with regards to Thiruvalluvar’s untouchable status, refer to the work of Stuart Blackburn. Stuart Blackburn, “Corruption and Redemption: The Legend of Valluvar and Tamil Literary History,” Modern Asian Studies 34, no.2 (May, 2000): 452-73.

! 263! since the 1930s.72 Despite this, Adi Dravida sangams retained their caste names and perhaps due to the continued salience of such categories in India. In the 1930s, as mentioned in a previous chapter, these sangams functioned as links between labourers and their kingroup and village communities in India, therefore these organisations reflected the self-designation of communities in India. Adi Dravida groups maintained distinct identities in organisations and everyday speech as a reflection of the continuing struggles that were unique to these communities.

The situation changed somewhat after the war. During the forties and fifties, cooperation between the Dravidian movement and Adi Dravida groups was reaching its peak in India and this was reflected in the large numbers of untouchable migrants who joined the TRC, SDK and later the SDMK, as more individuals from these groups fully identified with the movement and saw themselves as participants rather than allies.73 However the strongest reason for the decision undertaken by Adi Dravidas to identify themselves as Tamils lies in the push towards a distinctly Singaporean Tamil identity, culturally linked to India, but separate; adapted to a different social context. Ethnic identity was a creatively contested site, but the growing and publicly visible expression of Tamil solidarity across a cross-section of different religious and socio-economic groups also created a sprit of optimism and the impression amongst Adi Dravidas that public recognition of them simply as Tamils rather than untouchables was truly possible in an overseas context.

Transnational Cultural Agendas, Localised Contexts

As Carl Trocki and Michael Barr have highlighted, prior to 1942 Malaya was a mere geographical expression that covered separate British administrations ruling the Straits Settlements of Melaka, Singapore and Penang, the Federated and Unfederated

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 72 According to a publication of the TRA, one of its reasons for its formation was to see that Tamils were “one people without caste.” “Tamil Reform Society,” Seerthirutham, March, 1939, 1. 73 This coincided with the rising popularity of the Dravidian movement amongst younger volunteers in India. Pamela Price argues that radical mass mobilisation in the Dravidian movement reached its peak between 1949 and 1967, just before the DMK came to power. Pamela Price, “Revolution and Rank in Tamil Nationalism,” The Journal of Asian Studies 55, no.2 (May 1996): 359.

! 264! Malay States as well as Sarawak, North Borneo and Brunei.74 In the postwar period the region underwent a series of dramatic political changes during an incremental process of decolonisation. Sunil Amrith has vividly described the period of great uncertainty within the wider Bay of Bengal region, as Indian migrants became “minorities” in new nation-states.75

In 1955, after a failed British attempt at constructing a Malayan Union, the self- governing Federation of Malaya was formed which gained independence two years later, in 1957. Singapore remained a Crown Colony until it joined the Federation in 1963, although it was granted full internal self-government under the new PAP government in 1959.76 The union with Malaya that resulted in the formation of the Federation of Malaysia lasted a mere two years. In 1965, Singapore was expelled from the Federation, gaining independence as a sovereign nation. This tumultuous period was a time of great uncertainty for the Indian community in Singapore with regards to questions of citizenship rights, identity and belonging, and this had a great impact on negotiations of racial and caste identities. The shift away from public expressions of caste identity accompanied growing national identification with Malaya, Malaysia and Singapore and a corresponding drift away from political associations with India.

One of the last public manifestations of an organised untouchable identity in Malaya occurred in 1947, when the Malayan Indian Scheduled Caste Federation (MISCF) released a letter to the Straits Times commenting on India’s impending independence, at the time two months away. The general secretary of the MISCF, Mr. K. Nathan repeated a message from Jagjivam Ram, a former untouchable and member of the Interim Government of India, who advised the depressed class Indians of Malaya to prepare themselves for “another non-violent revolution for the attainment of social and economic equality with the caste Hindus of India.”77 “Although we welcome the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 74 Michael D. Barr and Carl A. Trocki, eds., Paths Not Taken: Political Pluralism in Post-War Singapore (Singapore: NUS Press, 2008), 5-6. 75 Amrith, Crossing the Bay of Bengal, 212-50. 76 Singapore was granted partial internal self-government between 1955 and 1959 under David Marshall of the Labour Front party, who was Singapore’s first Chief Minister. 77 “Depressed Class View,” Straits Times, June 6, 1947, 8. The MISCF was only formed in 1946, a year after the end of the Japanese Occupation of Singapore when political linkages between India and Malaya were briefly reinvigorated. The stated aim of the organisation was to serve as “a central body of the depressed backward and untouchable mass of India in order to look into the welfare and protect

! 265! fact that India is obtaining her independence,” wrote Nathan, “we have still to paddle our own canoe, because we have no faith in the so-called high caste Hindus in India.” “As a matter of fact”, he added, “we do not like the caste Hindus. There is no excuse for the atrocities still being caused to this day by the caste Hindus on the sixty or seventy million depressed class Indians in India.”78

It is evident that at this stage the orientation of members of this organisation was geared towards future participation in the social and political struggles of a newly independent India, with little mention of specific efforts within Malayan society itself apart from the transnational extension of support to untouchable movements in India. Even the reference to “Depressed Classes”, an administrative term used in India to refer to untouchables which had no official relevance in Malaya, foreshadows the manner in which organisations like the MISCF would lose their significance after decolonisation. The identity tropes being utilised did not retain their former salience amidst the vigorous attempts of newly emerging states to assert new identities against former diasporic allegiances. New geographic borders and the resulting legal mechanisms of legitimacy as manifested by the conferral of citizenship and the threat of repatriation were superimposed onto old webs of identity from the former imperial world.

Initially the Tamil press in Malaya was slow to react to proposals for the creation of a Malayan Union in 1946. Until the middle of 1949, Sarangapany’s Tamil Murasu was still entertaining the hope of dual citizenship being offered to domiciled and migrant Indians in Malaya.79 This came to end with citizenship legislation in India on the 14th of August 1949.80 After independence, the Government of India was reluctant to absorb a significant population of returning overseas Indians, especially of the labouring classes and in many instances encouraged overseas Indians to stay put. In a !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the interests of this unfortunate community in Malaya as well as in India.” “Malaya has Untouchables,” Singapore Free Press, August 15, 1946, 5; emphasis added. 78 “Depressed Class View,” Straits Times, 8. Leaders from the All India Scheduled Caste Federation visited Singapore and the Malaysian Federation in February 1951 to study the condition of untouchables there. K.K Gangachalam and V. K. Jeevanandam, two untouchable leaders in Singapore made arrangements for their visit, which shows that political links between untouchable groups in India and the Malayan Peninsular still existed in the early 1950s. “Indian Team for Malaya,” Straits Times, January 18, 1951, 7. 79 D/o Sinasamy, “Tamil Malar,” 10. 80 Rajeswary Ampalavanar, The Indian Minority and Political Changes, 1945-1957 (London: Oxford University Press, 1981), 48.

! 266! visit to Singapore in 1950, Nehru encouraged Indians in Malaya to “identify themselves with Malayan citizens and play their part in molding the future” of Malaya.81 These sentiments were echoed a year later by S.G. Ramachandran, the Agent of the Government of India in Malaya when local Indian leaders asked for his advice with regards to the question of the impending introduction of federal citizenship within Malaya.82 Malayan Indian leaders were apprehensive that the external orientation of Indians within Malaya would open the community to accusations of disloyalty from other communities, making the securing of future rights and privileges difficult. 83 Earlier, in March 1947, an Asian Relations Conference was held in Delhi, in which Asia’s future leaders discussed amongst other things, issues of future immigration and citizenship legislation.84 At the conference, a Malayan representative stated that: “The Indian and the Chinese are called upon to make a final and vital choice, whether or not he wants to be a citizen of Malaya today.”85

With the realisation that a clear choice had to be made between returning to India, or creating a future as citizens of Malaya, Tamil reformers quickly oriented to the latter, and began making the case for taking up citizenship in both the Malayan Federation and later in Singapore. The TRA and SDMK were both active in persuading Tamil members of the public to apply for citizenship.86 In the 1950s, many members of the SDMK also began to take up citizenship, encouraged by what they viewed as the better social progress and economic prospects in Singapore. 87 Many local-born members also took up citizenship and although inspired by the DMK in India and the personage of C.N. Annadurai, these activists strongly identified with Singapore and supported the call from PAP leaders to identify themselves as Singaporeans.88 M. Subramaniam, a former branch secretary of the SDMK recalled that the organisation was involved in production of several plays.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 81 “Indians Must Identify Themselves with Malaya: Agent Recalls Nehru’s Sound Advice,” The Indian Daily Mail, February 9, 1951, 2. 82 Ibid. 83 “Indian Youths Quitting Malaya to Avoid Call-Up? Dr. N. K. Menon’s Warning,” The Indian Daily Mail, Februar 21, 1951, 4. 84 Amrith, Crossing the Bay of Bengal, 217-9. 85 Ibid. 86 Elias, Thamizhavel Sarangapany, 20; M.P. Samy, interview by author, December 18, 2011. 87 M.P. Samy, interview by author, December 18, 2011. 88 Ibid.

! 267!

One of the main themes of these performances, which were directed at recent arrivals in Singapore from India, was that cultural practices and attitudes brought from India had to changed to fit a Singaporean context.89 This was informed by a growing sense at the time that Singapore constituted a different cultural environment and that it was inappropriate to reproduce caste differentiation there. A good illustration of this is demonstrated in the series of interviews with Tamil labourers, discussed in the third chapter, that were undertaken by Nalini Schooling in Singapore in the 1950s. During these interviews, her participants suggested that different codes of conduct with regards to caste applied in India and Singapore because of the differing over-arching social contexts.90

This ethos was actively encouraged by the state. At a National Day speech delivered at the Indian Association in 1966, Lee Kuan Yew reminded those present that Indians were “in a different milieu which requires different attitudes and adjustments.”91 The Straits Times, quoting a Singapore Legislative Counsellor, reported in 1951 that a very large number of scheduled caste members in Malaya objected to the proposed formation of the All Malaya Scheduled Caste Federation, arguing that after the war, caste was no longer present and that there was no need for such distinctions in the Malayan context.92 In the early 1960s and after independence, representatives of the PAP government also issued frequent reminders to community leaders about the need to leave behind certain aspects of culture from countries of origin and to adapt to the new values of the country. The PAP government remained wary of communal organisations, fearing their capacity to stir up chauvinism and hinder the supra-racial national identity that the PAP was promoting. Prior to expulsion from the Malaysian Federation in 1965, the PAP was also trying to shift the discourse of Malaysian politics away from a fixation on race politics.

The fear of inter-racial disharmony was particularly acute after two separate incidents of racial rioting in July and September 1964 between the Chinese and Malays in Singapore had left 36 people dead and a further 556 injured. At the same time, the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 89 M. Subramaniam, interview by author, January 24, 2012. 90 Schooling, “Study of Caste Practices,” 44, 63, 67, 77, 79, 83. 91 Netto, Passage of Indians, 163. 92 “Stop Caste Organisation Move, Plea,” Straits Times, December 22, 1951, 9.

! 268! PAP was dependent upon ethnic organisations as important grassroots networks for spreading their social agenda. A speech delivered by S. Rajaratnam, the PAP government’s Minister of Culture, delivered at a Thirukkural Conference organised by the SDMK in Singapore, also illustrates a fundamental tension between the government’s stance on ethnic organisations. Rajaratnam chose to use words from the Thirukkural to make the case for a common Malaysian identity, at the same time subtly chastising the SDMK for its exclusive focus on Tamils:

In Malaysia there are people who put a wrong and dangerous interpretation on what loving one’s neighbour means. For them one’s neighbour is not all the ten million peoples of Malaysia. For them one’s neighbour is only the man from the same race or religion…That is not how the great ethical literatures, including the Thirukkural defines a neighbour. The Thirukkural when it talks of forgiveness and love, pays no attention to race, creed or colour…So those among us who go about shouting Indians unite or Chinese unite or Malays unite have not understood the spirit of the Thirukkural…if your conference today this true spirit of the Thirukkural…then you will be doing honour not only to the Thirukkural but also doing your share to make Malaysia a happy and prosperous country.93

Several Dravidian reformist organisations and newspapers like the Tamil Malar served an important function by promoting multi-racialism and framed the case for cultural reform by contextualising cultural reform in the context of a multi-racial state. This was recognised by government leaders who appreciated the support provided by these organisations for their social agenda of inter-racial unity.94 After independence these organisations, while continuing to derive cultural influences from Tamil Nadu, began to demonstrate a uniquely Singaporean identity, commemorating events like National Day on the 9th of August every year.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 93 “Text of speech by the Minister of Culture, Mr. S. Rajaratnam at the opening of the Thirukkural Conference, organised by the Malaysian Dravidian Progressive Federation at the New Star Hall, New World Amusement Park on Sunday November 8 at 4pm,” M.C.NOV.20/64(CUL), 64-0026-96, NAS. 94 D/o Sinasamy, “Tamil Malar,” 30.

! 269!

Figure 11. Members of the SDMK, celebrating National Day in Singapore in 1974 near the organisation’s central headquarters in Norris Road.95 Amongst the thousand attendees were the Foreign Minister S. Rajaratnam and invited representatives and leaders from various ethnic communities.96

The Tamil Malar newspaper in particular was particularly supportive of the PAP government and had close links with the government.97 After the racial riots of 1964, the Tamil Malar ran articles that cautioned Tamil readers against communalism and aggressively pushed for an approach to nation-building that transcended racial divisions.98

Although transnational cultural links to reformers in India were acceptable to the new government in Singapore, transnational political links were not. With an identical name to a political party in India and identical organisational symbols, the SDMK soon came under scrutiny from the government, particularly from the Home Affairs

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 95 Kolgai Muzhakkam, September, 1974, 6. 96 Ibid. 97 D/o Sinasamy, “Tamil Malar,” 30. 98 Ibid., 25.

! 270! Minister Lim Kin San and PAP MP, S.V. Lingam.99 A big blow to the SDMK came when E.V. Krishnasamy Sampath, a nephew of Periyar and a co-founder of the DMK, was not allowed to visit Singapore for an event planned by the SDMK. DMK members were subsequently barred from entering Singapore until Annadurai’s visit in 1965, after the government was assured that the SDMK was not politically linked to the DMK and harbored no political ambitions.100 Perhaps aware of these suspicions, during his speech to a packed audience of thousands at the Jalan Besar stadium, Annadurai encouraged Tamils to adapt to a Singaporean way of living and to invest in Singaporean culture.101 Official suspicions did not end, however, and the Minister of Culture, S. Rajaratnam advised the SDMK to change its name and the colours of its flag that had replicated the black and red of the Dravidian movement in India.102 Faced with mounting pressure the SDMK reluctantly changed its name to the Singapore Tamilar Eyakkam (Singapore Tamils Movement) in 1969, the name it carries to this day.103 This was another strong reminder of the pressure to align Tamil reform to the political context of Singapore and to create distance with political developments in India. This is also representative of the general de-politicisation of the Tamil reform movement. Whilst the PAP government appreciated the co- operation of Dravidian organisations in promoting its political messages of multi- racialism and for contributing towards the socialisation of citizens, there was less tolerance for their continued resemblances to political organisations. The Dravidian movement in Singapore was for a brief time in the early post-war years, linked to union activity and was part of a “broader left-wing working class alliance.”104 The subsequent de-politicisation of these organisations in the 1950s and 1960s, corresponded to a narrowing of the political space in Singapore and to the increasing cultural focus of these organisations.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 99 M P Samy, interview by author, January 29, 2011. 100 Kolgai Muzhakkam, September, 1974, 6. 101 M. Subramaniam, interview by author, January 24, 2012. 102 M P Samy, interview by author, January 29, 2011. 103 Ibid. 104 Amrith, Crossing the Bay of Bengal, 240.

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! 272!

Figure 13. A 1974 publication commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the renamed, Singapore Tamilar Eyakkam (Singapore Tamils Movement), featuring C. N. Annadurai on the cover page.106

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 106 Kolgai Muzhakkam, September, 1974, cover page.

! 273!

Figure 14. The leadership of the Singapore Tamilar Eyakkam in 1974. M. P. Samy, the secretary of the organisation at the time, is pictured on the bottom left. Despite the presence of female members in the SDMK, it remained a largely male organisation, especially in terms of its leadership.107

By the late 1970s, the Dravidian element in Tamil cultural organisations in Singapore had begun to recede. Links with parties and organisations in India were considerably weakened, and in Singapore these bodies were less active, and their memberships had substantially declined. According to former activists, the decline of Tamil language education and aggressive urban renewal and resettlement saw the vast majority of the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 107 Kolgai Muzhakkam, September, 1974, 13.

! 274! population move from kampungs (villages) into Housing and Development Board flats had a big part to play. The break up of former Tamil enclaves weakened the cohesiveness of former Tamil communities and was extremely damaging to organisations like the SDMK.108 The legacy of these organisations, many of which still function, continues to be felt in enduring conceptions of Tamil ethnic identity in Singapore.

Contexts and Outcomes

In contemporary Tamil Nadu, the merging of untouchable and non-untouchable Tamils into a unified Tamil social body, undifferentiated by caste, remains elusive; if anything, caste identities have been strengthened in recent years. The politicisation of caste in Indian state and federal politics has entrenched caste as a category through which groups and individuals negotiate their relationships to the state to compete for resources in a largely populist electoral environment. Krishnamurthy Alamelu Geetha also highlights that since the 1990s, Dalits in Tamil Nadu once again asserted a separate and unique voice in the political and cultural spheres after experiencing disillusionment with both the Dravidian and Communist movements and their affiliated political parties.109 The articulation of a modern Dalit Tamil socio-political identity by groups such as the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (Liberation Panthers Party) represents a fundamental paradigm shift in the strategic conceptualisation of caste within the Dalit Tamil struggle for rights and recognition in India. In a letter to the Economic and Political Weekly, a Dalit contributor described contemporary Tamil Dalit attitudes to both and recent Dravidian politics:

For us, Dravida Maya is as pernicious as Arya Maya. Our community in Tamil Nadu has not suffered at the hands of German Nazis or hindutva people, but have suffered much from these Dravidian parties…who used us to marginalise brahmins, but treat us like dung. The four major castes…all belong to these Dravidian parties and we are oppressed by them. Our struggle continues.110

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 108 M P Samy, interview by author, January 29, 2011. 109 Geetha, “From Panchamars to Dalits,” 128. 110K. Shanmuganathan, “Dalits and Dravidian Ideology”, Economic and Political Weekly 35, no. 34 (August 2000), 3068.

! 275!

In Malaysia too, the distinction between untouchable Tamils and non-untouchable Tamils has persisted. In his study on caste consciousness amongst Malaysian Tamils conducted in the 1980s, Rajakrishnan Ramasamy noted the prevalence of two salient social categories; Tamilar – denoting all non-untouchable Tamil Hindus – and Paraiyar - signifying Tamils from untouchable castes.111

The starkly different outcomes for Adi Dravidas and former Adi Dravidas in Singapore, Malaysia and Tamil Nadu highlight the importance of the socio-cultural and political context in order for ideology to have a measurable social impact. In Singapore, several factors contributed actively to the decline of caste attitudes in conjunction with social reform. The de-Indianisation of the Public Works Department that began in the early 1960s is one example of how changing occupational patterns removed highly visible identifiers of untouchable status. 112 Massive urban redevelopment saw the destruction of villages or kampongs and the resettlement of the vast majority of the population into multi-storied Housing Development Board flats in the 1960 and 1970s broke up racial enclaves. This dis-established long- standing community structures, dislocating former caste and kin-group ties between villages in Singapore and India, resulting in an atomisation of family units and individuals, and of networks of recognition. These weakened Dravidian reform organisations, but also contributed to the further breakdown of caste identity. The introduction of English as the primary language of instruction for all school subjects (with all other languages as secondary) in 1987 has also meant that a younger generation of Singaporeans will have enhanced access to a multi-racial public sphere where sub-ethnic identities are rendered invisible beneath an umbrella of radically simplified racial categories.

Today the descendants of former untouchables negotiate a complex combination of identities apart from “Tamil” and “Indian”. After the Second World War, however, the vast majority of the Adi Dravida population was Tamil speaking and Tamil- educated. It was therefore the renegotiation of Tamil identity and the efforts of Tamil reform organisations in securing public acceptance of a casteless and religiously !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 111 Ramasamy, Caste Consciousness, 10. 112 Annual Report of the Department of Public Works 1961 (Singapore: Government Printer, 1963), 7.

! 276! neutral definition of Tamil ethnicity that helped to provide and frame an alternative identity in the context of shifting territorial loyalties and an emphasis on multi- culturalism in an independent state. Within a new national context, the social and material advantages once conferred by caste status no longer applied and non- untouchable Tamils gradually accepted the receding of caste identity. This social environment provided former untouchables with the real choice of dispensing with caste identity as a means of improving their social conditions, a choice that was ultimately taken by the community.

! 277! Conclusion

I initially began this study with the aim of examining a narrowly-focused history of untouchable migration and identity construction in Singapore. Using as a starting point the contemporary public disappearance of practices, attitudes and identities associated with prejudice against untouchables, as well as the relative absence of the untouchable in the historical record, I set out to accomplish a number of goals based on the directions of my early research. I wanted to establish that untouchables had migrated in significant numbers; to understand the reasons why they undertook migration; and to uncover how untouchable migrants overcame caste disabilities overseas. My intention was to plot the steady decline of caste attitudes and identities in Singapore throughout over a century of migration and to examine and uncover the new identity narratives that replaced untouchable identity. During the 19th century, when Indians began overseas migration as labourers in many parts of the British Empire, replacing slaves and transmarine convicts in the imperial labour economy, the majority of colonial observers predicted that caste would rapidly erode in an overseas environment and that migration would be an emancipatory experience for untouchables.

In the course of my research it soon became evident that caste and the public practice of untouchability amongst Tamil migrants in Singapore did not undergo a steady and gradual decline that fitted neatly into a singular chronological frame. Not only was caste identity remarkably persistent, but the nature of caste practice and the intensity of caste consciousness also fluctuated considerably during the 19th and 20th centuries in response to a frequently shifting social and political context. The history of untouchability in Singapore was also inseparably linked to a much broader narrative of how Indian migrant identities were negotiated in relation to intra-community dynamics, labour and migration policies, translocal kinship networks and an evolving cultural relationship between Singapore and India. The chapters presented here have reflected this expanded approach and the various concerns of what emerged as a freshly re-conceived project that explores the links between the quotidian and larger historical narratives. To make these links explicit, I have attempted to balance the

! 278! study of everyday social practices and attitudes – for example, the politics surrounding the use of glassware for coffeeshops in Indian enclaves – against the larger context of imperial politics, war and decolonisation. A number of major themes have guided its overall structure. I summarise these, together with my findings below.

Responses to Structural Conditions Overseas: Caste as a Register of Migrant Agency

Colonial discourses linking migration to the erosion of caste was based on the observation that life in Singapore presented several structural challenges that weighted against the preservation of caste cultures. However such discourses read the Indian migrant as a passive and malleable individual, susceptible to changes in social outlook as a direct result of policy decisions. The ways that caste Hindus resisted structural challenges to caste and the means by which untouchable migrants utilised opportunities for transgressing caste-based social disabilities however, demonstrate the agency of these migrants who actively sought to shape the negotiation of culture overseas.

One of the structural challenges presented by migration to Singapore was the multi- ethnic pluralism of the island, within which Indians constituted a minority. This fact shaped the practice of caste throughout the period under investigation. The presence of other communities and individuals to whom caste hierarchies were not salient constantly challenged caste Hindu attempts to create public practices of untouchability and also provided untouchables with alternative reference points for identities outside of caste paradigms. The social environment of Singapore shifted significantly between the 19th and 20th century. The high degree of inter-ethnic contact between relatively small and heterogeneous communities that informed cultural compromise gave way to ethnic enclaves and stronger boundaries in accordance with the changing demographics of Indian migration. Although caste was strengthened as a result, contact with other communities continued to challenge the imposition of untouchability. This was resisted by caste Hindus in a number of ways that reveal the material and social significance of caste practice to caste-Hindu migrants and their relationships to Singapore. The reluctance of caste-Hindu migrants

! 279! to place non-Indians within paradigms of caste practice demonstrates the orientation of many migrants towards the subcontinent.

British labour policies and legal frameworks in Singapore also militated against caste practice perhaps most strikingly during the period of oceanic convict transfers from India in the 19th century. Reinforced by the discursive link between transmarine sentencing and the loss of caste, as well as the length of convicts’ sentences and the severing of their kinship links with communities India, penal authorities in Singapore constructed a penal system that radically ruptured caste hierarchies and provided untouchable convicts with a means to transcend their caste identities through varied occupational training and induction into the wage-labour economy of the early settlement.

Penal policies were in many ways guided by the same liberal principles that continued to characterise British attempts at managing the multi-racial makeup of the colony. Stamford Raffles had initially intended to gradually reduce the legal relevance of distinct cultural practices that were to be replaced by an emphasis on uniformity before the law. However, economic imperatives remained the basis for British governance in Singapore and cultural non-interventionism characterised official attitudes to practices that lay outside the realms of public safety and the uniform administration of law.

In contrast to convicts who were subject to a totalising penal environment, the Tamil labourers who arrived en masse from the 1870s were able to negotiate culture beneath the level of official surveillance. Caste Hindus were able to enforce zonal separation in Indian enclaves and to circumvent the threat posed by wage labour by creating a system of occupational specification that, while never an official policy, was enforced by coercive means amongst the migrant community. Untouchables in Singapore became closely linked to the most unhygienic, unpleasant and lowest-paying jobs in the municipality, creating a strong visual indicator of caste identity in the public sphere and facilitating caste prejudice. Beyond familial duty and religious convictions, caste solidarities provided a means of security to migrants overseas and for groups to mobilise in order to secure access to limited resources and opportunities in a competitive environment.

! 280! Identity Orientations: Translocal Connections, Diasporic Consciousness and Citizenship

The intensity of caste practice changed in accordance with the shifting orientations of migrants between Singapore and communities in India throughout the period of study. During the convict period that was the focus of the first chapter, Indian migrants were atomised individuals finding themselves in a small and highly heterogeneous Indian community. Singapore was viewed as a temporary stopover, a place where the strictures of caste and cultural protocols were often momentarily set aside out of necessity. Ex-convicts who settled in Singapore during this period severed ties with India, either inter-marrying with other communities or entering unions with other Indians. Many of their descendents comprised what became a “Straits-born” community of Indians who identified with Malaya as home, discarded caste identities and established a much more distant cultural relationship with India.

The entry of Tamil labour migrants into Malaya during the 1870s fundamentally changed the constitution of Indian community and began a period in which the majority of the Indian community in Malaya not only oriented their identities towards India, but did so specifically in relation to translocal communities. The migration of labourers from the same castes, regions of origin, villages and kin groups created the conditions for the establishment of a continuum of caste practice. During this period physical communities and environments in Singapore were seen as extensions of villages and communities in India. Migrants continued to have a transient outlook and to view their time in Singapore and other parts of Malaya as impermanent. However because of patterns of circular migration, networks of community surveillance were created that provided an impetus for the self-policing of caste and attempts to maintain the status quo. Behaviour was governed by a moral economy of duty and responsibility to family members overseas, on whom the contravention of caste protocols and the altering of inter-caste relations would have an impact.

From the 1920s, Indian organisations in Singapore became engaged in social reform and efforts to uplift the Indian labouring community. Closely tied to the Congress-led independence movement and Periyar’s Self Respect Movement in India, the Indian Association and Tamil Reform Association advanced competing broader identities.

! 281! The Indian Association advanced a pan-Indian identity that was linked to support for the Independence Movement, whilst the Tamil Reform Association promoted a Dravidian Tamil ethnic identity that was egalitarian and casteless, couched in the logic of eventual secession from India after independence. Through the spread of newspapers, theatrical performances and social activism, these organisations helped to broaden migrant identity beyond the narrow confines of castes, regions, villages and kinsmen. In addition to translocal solidarities, migrants also now began to see themselves as part of diasporic communities engaged in wider social struggles.

I argue that the shift towards diasporic identities and the ideological influence of the Dravidian movement and Congress nationalism significantly extended the discursive spectrum upon which caste was challenged. Not only were questions of caste and untouchability being dealt with extensively in India by both movements discursively and through social activism, both the Indian Association and the TRA courted Adi Dravida support in Singapore and encouraged these communities to identify with a pan-Indian and Dravidian Tamil identity respectively. The negotiation of untouchable identities and responses to caste prejudice were also linked to the dynamics of intra- community relations amongst the Indians in Malaya. These relations were complicated by complex differences in class, education and ethnic identity. I argued that by the late 1930s the Adi Dravida community began to gravitate towards the Dravidian movement because it was able to issue a more direct challenge to caste, articulate a more egalitarian narrative of identity and also foster closer grassroots links with the Adi Dravida community.

From the 1920s to 1965, the identity negotiations of untouchables in Singapore were inextricably linked to the broader negotiation of Indian and Tamil identities in Singapore, in which untouchable migrants were actively involved. A brief rupture to the growing ascendency of Dravidian Tamil ideology occurred during the Japanese Occupation when a revolutionary pan-Indian identity became the dominant identity narrative within the context of the coercive mass mobilisation of the entire Indian community in anti-British activity. Despite this, Dravidian Tamil identity became the dominant identity narrative amongst Adi Dravidas in the post-war period during which time the nature and substance of Dravidian Tamil identity changed in response to a growing Singaporean outlook in the lead up to decolonisation and independence.

! 282!

After the war, the political climate of the region began to change dramatically with decolonisation. Following India’s independence and the planned British withdrawal from Malaya, questions of future citizenship dominated the negotiation of identity, forcing Indians to reconfigure previous notions of homeland and belonging. To Indian migrants, the successive breakup of the British Empire ended the sense that Malaya was a part of a “greater India.” The future of the Indian community in Singapore was now on a trajectory distinct from socio-political developments in India and was now firmly placed within the context of the political future of Malaya, in which they would exist as minorities. Between the late 1940s and 1960s, the region was in the grip of considerable political uncertainty.

In the midst of this, the cultural influence of the Dravidian movement in India continued to grow in Singapore, despite an increasing political separation between the island and Tamil Nadu, where demands for a separate Tamil state continued until the early 1960s. The Tamil revival in Singapore was orchestrated by activists who increasingly identified with Singapore and re-contextualised social reform to fit a new national context. During the 1950s and 1960s, Tamils who chose to stay in Singapore not only began to identify with the island as home, but increasingly realised that Singapore represented a unique cultural context. The material and social benefits that once accompanied claims to superior caste status were quickly fading, followed later by the translocal societal obligations that fuelled the moral economy of caste practice. Caste identities began to recede in the public sphere in line with the widespread acceptance of a linguistically-defined Tamil identity.

Identity Discourses and Ideology

The final major theme of this study has been the close examination of the evolution of the various identity discourses and ideologies that shaped caste practice and resistance to caste during the period of study. The ways in which the question of untouchability was framed within Indian nationalist and Dravidian reform discourses played an important role in the ways in that Adi Dravidas responded to the social reform efforts of organisations linked to both movements in Singapore. It is important to stress that

! 283! the Adi Dravida community was not passively led by these organisations, but were active participants, particularly in the Dravidian social reform movement. Untouchables vigorously debated their support for Dravidian and Indian nationalist- linked organisations in relation to the respective identity discourses put forth by these organisations, as well as an assessment of their utility as a means of social improvement. It is worth noting the untouchables in Singapore retained a separate untouchable identity that was informed by a unique history of untouchable intellectual discourse. In the last chapter I argued that the common genealogical roots of untouchable Tamil and Dravidian discursive traditions resulted in a high degree of symbolic intertextuality and syncretism that facilitated the eventual submergence of Adi Dravida identity within a linguistic Tamil identity in Singapore.

However it was only in the 1950s, when the wider Tamil community began to accept a linguistic Tamil identity, that the replacement of a distinct Adi Dravida identity became a viable strategy for overcoming caste disabilities. It was then that Adi Dravida leaders decided to adopt this course, spelling an end to the organisational mobilisation of untouchable identity that began four decades earlier in the 1920s. The reluctance up until this point to submerge untouchable identities within a larger socio- linguistic movement reflected a consciousness on the part of untouchables of their unique subaltern subjectivities. The decision to end untouchable identities must therefore be regarded as a conscious act of agency and a strong reflection of the shifting orientations of former Adi Dravidas who now were no longer soujourners in Singapore but citizens.

Reflections and Areas for Future Study

In Sana Aiyar’s study of the Indian diaspora in Kenya, she critiques what she identifies as the “dehistoricized theoretical predilections of diaspora studies” that ignore the historical specificities that give rise to particular diasporas, impairing a comprehensive contextualised understanding of them. 1 Mindful of this, I have

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 Sana Aiyar, “Anticolonial Homelands across the Indian Ocean: The

! 284! attempted to ground this study of untouchables in Singapore in the historical specificity of the period, adopting theoretical approaches that advance a greater understanding of the topic, while avoiding the subordination of the structure of the study to lengthy discussions of theoretical concepts like ambivalence, hybridity and liminality, which I felt would alter the scope of the work considerably. During the many hours I spent with various interviewees I came to realise that many have a keen interest in reading academic work that features the historical studies of their communities, some even offering considered critiques of the scholarly works I have cited. The desire of these interviewees to engage with these histories, whilst not affecting the content of this study, informed my conscious decision to attempt a writing style that as far as possible remained accessible to a wider readership.

There are unanswered questions within these pages, the result of the paucity of available sources at the time of research and the necessarily limited scope of the study. This is by no means an exhaustive account of the history of untouchable migration into Singapore, but an initial study that will serve as the basis for, and hopefully inspire, future research projects. Such work might be more attentive to the nuances in the relationships between untouchable migrants of different castes, particularly between the Pariahs and Pallars, and the interaction between untouchable sub-caste identity and the experience of subalterneity in Singapore. The links between communists and untouchables for a very brief period between the end of the Second World War and the declaration of the Emergency in 1948 also remains an interesting area of inquiry.

Another crucial area for further research would be the study of untouchable female migrants who had to contend with intersectional identities as labourers, untouchables and women in a male dominated social milieu. Many untouchable women arrived on the plantations of Malaya, where they were subject to lower wages and frequent violence at the hands of men in their communities. In Singapore their numbers were much smaller, because the municipal vocations to which untouchable primarily were employed were almost exclusively male. Nevertheless, untouchable families did

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Politics of the Indian Diaspora in Kenya, ca. 1930–1950,” American Historical Review (October 2011): 988.

! 285! arrive in Singapore, and untouchable women were present in increasing numbers. A study of the lives of these women and their relationship to the growing discourse of women’s rights within the Tamil reform movement would provide a more comprehensive understanding of untouchable migration into Singapore though the lens of gender. It is my hope that this present study will contribute towards a greater and more holistic understanding of the cultural dimensions of Indian migration into Singapore and will provide a historical framework for understanding aspects of contemporary Tamil identities in Singapore.

! 286! Appendix

The timeline below maps out some of the key dates with regards to various systems of Indian recruitment and migration to Malaya during the pre-war period.

1834: Indenture begins in the British Empire, and indentured labourers begin to arrive in Malaya. 1860s: The Kangany system is introduced by some plantations owners who prefer to send their own labourers to India as recruiting agents. 1864: Recruitment of Indian labourers to the Straits Settlements is banned. 1867: The recruitment of Indian labourers to other parts of Malaya is banned. 1870: The Sub-Collector of Tanjore criticises the recruitment of indentured labourers as a “regularly organised system of kidnapping.” 1872: The ban on Indian Emigration to Malaya is lifted. 1876-78: Emigration from Tamil Nadu grows significantly during a period of great famine. 1887: The Steamship Subsidy enacted. 1907: Kangany recruitment comes under the control of the Indian Immigration Committee, which begins to regulate it and issue certificates for kanganies. The Tamil Immigration Fund Ordinance is passed and employers of Indian labour make compulsory contributions to a fund that is used to import Tamil labour. Free passages to Malaya are provided for labourers. 1910: Indentured labour to Malaya is banned. 1921-30: Heaviest period of Indian migration to Malaya is recorded, with 98,000 arrivals. 1931-33: Labour emigration to Malaya virtually ceases due the Great Depression and a huge drop in the price of rubber.

! 287! 1934: Emigration to Malaya resumes when the price of rubber improves. Kangany system largely phased out. Most labourers arrive as free migrants. For the first time, whole Indian families begin to uproot and arrive in Malaya. 1935: Free migrants arrive in two streams: assisted migrants whose passages are paid by the Malayan Emigration authorities and non-assisted migrants who pay for their own deck passages. An increasing number of passengers are classed ‘non- emigrants’, meaning that they are returning to Malaya after having spent more than 5 years there. 1938: Large-scale “assisted migration of unskilled labour” is ceased after a ban from the Indian government. Virtually all subsequent Indian labour migration to Malaya consists of skilled workers and labourers returning after a period of leave in India.

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! 291! Singapore English Schools Tamil Teachers Union, 1362/56, NAS. —. “Letter from the Director of Education, R.E. Ince to Secretary, Singapore English Schools, Tamil Teachers Union, 18th May 1957.” —.”Letter from Hon. Secretary, M. Annamalai, the Singapore English Schools Tamil Teacher’s Union to Mr. Yong Nyuk Lin, Minister of Education, Singapore, 18th June 1959.” —.”Letter from Hon. Sec, Singapore English School Tamil Teachers Union to Perm Sec. Ministry of Education, Singapore, 27th Sep 1958.” Singapore Government Department of Statistics, Ministry of Trade and Industry, Census of Population 2010 Statistical Release 1: Demographic Characteristics, Education, Language and Religion. Singapore: Singapore Department of Statistics, 2012. Singapore Reconstruction Departmental Reports: Public Works, 1945-6, p.12. CO 273/678/7/51014/, National Archives, UK. SMALL, A.S. Annual Report on the Social and Economic Progress of the People of the Straits Settlements 1936. Singapore: Government Printer, 1937. Straits Settlements: Immigration Report 1901, June 16, 1902, p.1. IOR/L/PJ/6/603, File 1181, British Library. “Text of speech by the Minister of Culture, Mr. S. Rajaratnam at the opening of the Thirukkural Conference, organised by the Malaysian Dravidian Progressive Federation at the New Star Hall, New World Amusement Park on Sunday November 8 at 4pm.” M.C.NOV.20/64(CUL), 64-0026-96, National Archives Singapore. THOMPSON, H.A. Straits Settlements Annual Report on Immigration for the Year 1887. Singapore: Government Printing House, 1888. Wavell, A. Operations in Malaya, 1944, CAB/66/26/44, National Archives, UK. War of 1939-1944 WO 325/46 NAB1111, Appendix “V” to S Section CSDIC (I) Report No. 1007 on H/1050 CAPT MOHAN SINGH 1/14 PUNJAB, 62, NAS.

Other Publications and Archival Sources

AMBEDKAR, Bhimrao Ramji. What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables. Bombay: Thacker and Co., 1946.

! 292! AIYANGAR, Muttusvami Srinivasa. Tamil Studies: Essays on the History of the Tamil People, Language, Religion and Literature. 1914. Reprint, New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1998. AIYANGAR, Sakkotai Krishnaswami. Some Contributions of South Asia to Indian Culture. 1923. Reprint, New Delhi: Cosmo Publications, 1981. BUCKLEY, Charles Burton. An Anecdotal History of Old Times in Singapore. 1902. Reprint, Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1984. CALDWELL, Robert. A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages. 1875. Reprint, New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprinting Corporation, 1974. CARNATICUS [pseud.]. Four Letters of Carnaticus, Explanatory of His View of the Indian Army, the Missionaries, and Press of India, as Inserted in the Asiatic Journals for May, September, October, and November, 1821. London, 1821. Accessed October 20, 2011. http://www.jstor.org/stable/60209803. Convict Jail: Main Entrance, 1860s – 1890s, CO 1069/484 (27), National Archives, UK. DUBOIS, Jean Antoine. A Description of the Character, Manners, and Customs of the People of India; And of their Institutions, Religious and Civil. 2nd ed. Edited by G.U. Pope. Madras: Law Bookseller and Publisher, 1862. FORBES, James. Oriental Memories: A Narrative of Seventeen Years Residence in India. London: R. Bentley, 1834. GANDHI, Mohandas K. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 33, 25 September 1925- 10 February 1926. New Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 2000. Accessed January 21, 2014. http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL033.PDF. KUNTE, Mahadev Moreshwar. The Vicissitudes of Aryan Civilization in India: An Essay which Treats of the History of the Vedic and Buddhistic Polities, Explaining their Origin, Prosperity, and Decline. Bombay: Oriental Printing Press, 1880. McNAIR, J.F.A. Prisoners Their Own Warders: A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits Settlements. Westminster: A. Constable and Co., 1899. OLDHAM, William Fitzjames. Malaysia: Nature’s Wonderland. Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham, 1907.

! 293! PANDEY, Sita Ram. From Sepoy to Subedar: Being the Life and Adventures of Subedar Sita Ram, a Native Officer of the Bengal Army Written and Related by Himself. 1873. Edited by James Lunt. Delhi: Vikas Publications, 1970. POPE, G.U. The Tiruvacagam or ‘Sacred Utterances’ Of The Tamil Poet, Saint, and Sage, Manikka-Vacagar. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900. “Post-War Independence Movements.” Wall-panel, Yasukuni Shrine Museum, November 2010. RAFFLES, Thomas Stamford. Singapore: Local Laws and Institutions. London: Cox & Baylie, 1824. READ, William Henry. Play & Politics Reminiscences of Malaya by an Old Resident. London: Wells Gardner, Darton & Co., 1901. RISLEY, Herbert Hope. The Castes and Tribes of India. 1915. Reprint, Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1969. —. The People of India. 1913. Reprint. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1999. ROBSON, John H. M. People in a Native State. Singapore: Walter Makepeace, 1894. “Singapore Muslims Parading with Patriotic Emblems to Welcome Return of the British to Singapore at the Junction of Selegie Road and Short Street,” 1945. Acc. Nos. 111013,111014, National Archives of Singapore /Imperial War Museum. SOCIETY for the Propagation of the Gospel. The Mission Field: A Monthly Record of the Proceedings of The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, At Home and Abroad, vol. 2. London: E Clay Printer, 1857. TENALI, S.R.S. Congress Mission to Malaya. N.p.: Kalyani Press, 1947. The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China and Australasia 26 (May-August). London: Wm.H.Allen and Co., 1838. The Adidravida: His Cult Past & Present & His Outlook, The Presidential Address Delivered by Mr. M.B. Rama Naidu at the Adi Dravida Conference held at Chidambaram on 21 -4- 21. Chidambaram: A.S. Sahajanandam, 1921. India Office Library, Pamphlets, Vol. 17, P/T185, British Library. THOMSON, John Turnbull. Some Glimpses into Life in the Far East. London: Richardson & Company, 1865.

! 294! THURSTON, Edgar. Castes and Tribes of Southern India. 1909. Reprint, New Delhi: Asian Educational Service, 2001. ! —. The Madras Presidency with Mysore, Coorg and the Associate States. Cambridge

University Press, Cambridge, 1913. YULE, Henry, and Arthur C. Burnell. Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive. London: J. Murray, 1903 Thamizhavel Narppani Mandram, Minutes of Meeting, September 9, 1998.

Oral History Records

Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore

Ambiavagar, Velauthar. Accession No. 000355, Reel: 7. Appan, Sumitra. Accession No. 003340, Reel: 4. Bhattacharya, Kishore. Accession. No. 003490, Reel: 1/4. Corridon, Richard B. Accession No. 000131, Reel: 1. Daniels, Anthony. Accession No. 000277, Reel: 4. Doraisamy, Bishop Theodore. Accession No. 000530, 33, Reel: 13. Fernandez, Michael. Accession No. 000076, Reel: 2. Khan, Ahmad. Accession No. 000400, Reel: 10. Krishnan, Kolamgare. Accession. No. 001252, Reel: 5. —. Accession No. 001252, Reel: 4. Krisnan, Nadarajan Ratha. Accession No. 000883, Reel: 5. Lingam, S. V. Accession No. 000014, Reel: 7. Manickar, Vasagar Subramanian. Accession No. 001201, Reel: 9. Menon, Kanichat Raghava. Accension No. 000025, Reel: 7. —. Accession No. 000025, Reel: 5. Naidu, Lakshmi. Accession No: 000110, Reel: 5. Pathy, T.R.S. Accession No. 000360, Reel: 2. Pereira, Tobias. Accession. No. 003516, Reel: 5. Rajan, Soundara. Accession No. 001706, Reel: 1.

! 295! —. 1987. Accession No. 000845, Reel: 20. Ramoo, Pakirisamy Naidu. Accession No. 000827, Reel: 11. Ramasamy, Narayanasamy. Accension. No. 0011194, Reel: 8. Silcock, Thomas. Accession No. 000180, Reel: 8. Singh, Joginder. Accession. No. 000365, Reel: 8. —. Accession No. 000365, Reel: 9. Singh, Ram Dular. Accession No. 001286, Reel: 3. s/o K. Kesavan, Damodaran. Accession No. 000127, Reel: 5. —. Accession No. 000127, Reel: 3. s/o Pakirisamy, Kannusamy. Accession No. 000081, Reel: 28. s/o Vallupillai, Pandarapillai. Accession No. 000339, Reel: 4. Sockalingam, S. Accession No. 001619, Reel: 12. Soon, Lee Tian. Accession No. 000265, Reel: 7. Subramanion, Bala. Accession No. 003340, Reel: 4. Thevathasan, Gnanasundram. Accession. No. 000345, Reel: 12. Tyebally, Abdulkader. Accession No. 000161, Reel: 4.

Newspapers ! Adi Murasu (Singapore) —“Untitled.” Adi Murasu. April 5, 1939, 1. (Translated from Tamil by author).

!"#$%&'($!$%&'()*+,-. —Alagappan, AS.C. “Alagappan, “Indians urged to Observe Events of National Importance Strictly According to Instructions Issued.” Azad Hind, March 28, 2604 (1944), 2. —“Ceylonese Here Urged to Give Unstinted Support to India’s Freedom War.” Azad Hind, April 7, 2604 (1944), 2. —“Free Malai is Foundation for Free India.” Azad Hind, February 15, 2604 (1944), 2. —“Hindustani Lesson 40.” Azad Hind, October 29, 2603 (1943), 2. —“Mahatma Gandhi,” Azad Hind, May 5, 2604 (1944), 2. —“More Volunteers for INA Arrive.” Azad Hind, January 18, 2604 (1944), 2.

! 296!

Dravida Kesari: A High Class Tamil Monthly (Singapore) All articles translated from Tamil by author, unless otherwise stated.

—“The Nation and it’s Mother Tongue,” Dravida Kesari: A High Class Tamil Monthly, (April-May 1937), 10 —“Indians,” Dravida Kesari: A High Class Tamil Monthly 1 (April-May, 1937), 22.

Indian Daily Mail (Singapore) ! —“Dato Onn Visualises Evolution of a Single State of Malaysia: Comprising Malaya, Indonesia etc.” Indian Daily Mail, January 27, 1951, 5. —“Draft Proposals of Pan-Malayan Indian Organisation.” Indian Daily Mail, July 22, 1946, 3. —“Indian Youths Quitting Malaya to Avoid Call-Up? Dr. N. K. Menon’s Warning.” Indian Daily Mail, February 21, 1951, 4. —“Indians Must Identify Themselves with Malaya: Agent Recalls Nehru’s Sound Advice.” Indian Daily Mail, February 9, 1951, 2. —“Tamils to Raise Funds for Malayan Varsity: Holiday Asked for Ponggal Instead of Thaipusam.” Indian Daily Mail, February 22, 1951, 5.

Kolgai Muzhakkam (Singapore) —Kolgai Muzhakkam, September, 1974.

Kudi Arasu (Madras) All articles translated from Tamil by author, unless otherwise stated.

—“Adi Dravidas.” Kudi Arasu, August 25, 1940, 3.

! 297! —“The Deplorable Condition of the Adi Dravidas.” Kudi Arasu, January 16, 1929, 5. —“Conversation between Periyar and Gandhi.” Kudi Arasu, September 14, 1927, 4.

Munnetram (Singapore) All articles translated from Tamil by author, unless otherwise stated.

—“Untitled.” Munnetram, February 5, 1931, 6. —“Untitled.” Munnetram. February 12, 1932, 3. —“Untitled.” Munnetram, January 1, 1931, cover page.

Straits Times Overland Journal (Singapore) —“The Convict Question.” Straits Times Overland Journal, October 25, 1870, 3. —“Letter to the Editor of the Straits Times.” Straits Times Overland Journal, September 10, 1869, 4.

Tamil Murasu (Singapore) All articles translated from Tamil by author, unless otherwise stated.

—“Allied Defeat, Disaster to India: Separation of Dravidanad Urged, to Preserve Tamil Culture and Civilization and Prevent Aryan Domination Over Tamilians: Periyar Ramasamy Speaks Out at Tinnevelly.” Tamil Murasu, June 25, 1940, 7. —“An Appeal to the Dravidians.” Tamil Murasu, October 23, 1940, 4. —“Can the India That Was Ruled by 56 Kings Be One Nation: The Tamil Nation That Did Not Bow Before Akbar and Asoka.” Tamil Murasu, April 30, 1940, 5. —“Is it Atheistic to Work for the Progress of Tamils? Ipoh Responds to Criticisms Against the Tamil leader.” Tamil Murasu, October 4, 1940, 10. —“Our Nation’s Character and the Character of other Nations.” Tamil Murasu, November 5, 1940, 6. —“Periyar’s Birthday Celebrated in Malacca.” Tamil Murasu, October 2, 1940, 6. —“Russia and Japan.” Tamil Murasu, May 21, 1936, 3. —“Singapore Adi Dravida Sangam.” Tamil Murasu, November 20, 1940, 2. —“Some Speeches at the Maruthuvar Sangam.” Tamil Murasu, November 3, 1940, 6.

! 298! —“Tamil Language and Tamil Society: Those Who Call Themselves “Indians” Have Not Realised Tamil Values.” Tamil Murasu, April 24, 1940, 9 —“The Situation of Japan’s Women: Voting Rights, Birth Control.” Tamil Murasu, May 16, 1936, 6. —“We Don’t Need the Favours of the North Indians: Why Are We Saying that Tamil Nadu Should Be Separate: Periyar’s Views.” Tamil Murasu, May 11, 1940, 1.

The Argus (Melbourne) ! —“Gandhi Sees Dangers of “Quit India” Policy.” The Argus, June 30, 1942, 3.

The Madras Mail (Madras) ! —“Untitled.” Madras Mail, December 27, 1933.

The Indian (Singapore) ! —“All Malaya Tamils’ Association.” The Indian, May 22 May, 1941, 7. —“Dips Into Life Behind the Cooly Lines.” The Indian, May 23, 1936, 5. —“How I.As Are Run.” The Indian, February 13, 1941, 5. —“Indian Labour Topics by Our Labour Correspondent.” The Indian, January 4, 1936, 5. —“Indian Agent’s Appeal to Community: Sink your Differences, Opening of Chamber of Commerce at Ipoh.” The Indian, March 13, 1941, 3. —“Indians and Indian Associations.” The Indian, January 23, 1941, 6. —“Indians in Malaya: A Message From India.” The Indian, December 28, 1935, 4. —“Interdependence between India and Malaya, Ancient Contacts Still Continue: Community’s Part in Malaya’s Development.” The Indian, January 15, 1941, 2. —“Lethargy of our Indian Associations, Adi Dravida Conference: Noisy Session in Kuala Lumpur.” The Indian, January 4, 1936, 4. —“Mahatma and Untouchability: Work Not Given Up.” The Indian, April 11, 1936, 5.

! 299! —“Miri Indians Form Association: Opening Speech by President.” The Indian, March 13, 1941, 5. —“New Premises of Butterworth United Indian Association Opened: No Need to Say “United”-Mr. C.S Venkatachar’s Advice.” The Indian, January 23, 1941, 6. —“No Longer Leaderless.” The Indian, January 23, 1941, 5. —“Ramasamy to Decide?” The Indian, January 18, 1936, 3. —“Singapore Indian Association: Its Programme of Activities.” The Indian, May 2, 1936, 2. —“The Harijan Movement and Gandhi.” The Indian, February 8, 1936, 4. —“The Indian Agent’s Report.” The Indian, December 28, 1935, 15.

The Straits Times (Singapore) ! —“A Chitty Outwitted.” Straits Times, October 17, 1904, 10. —“A Filthy Canal.” Straits Times, September 9, 1949, 6. —“Aims of Singapore Tamils, Fourteen Points to be Pursued.” March 28, 1933, 17. —“Body Found.” Straits Times, April 13, 1951, 4. —“Body Found in Rochore River.” Straits Times, February 16, 1957, 4. —“Body in Canal.” Straits Times, July 8, 1954, 5. —“Boy Murders His Mother: Sentence of Death Passes at Kuala Lumpur.” Straits Times, December 1, 1923, 12. —“Burdens of Caste: Advancements of Indians Retarded.” Straits Times, January 3, 1930, 19. —“Caste Hindus Tested: Pious Precepts Without an Example.” Straits Times, May 24, 1933, 14. —“Caste in Malaya.” Straits Times, January 26, 1934, 10. —“Caste Names.” Straits Times, September 18, 1933, 6 —“Caste Names.” Straits Times, September 25, 1933, 5. —“Caste Prejudice Costs Young Hindu Girl Her Life.” Straits Times, May 23, 1934, 5. —“Ceylon Tamils’ Gift to Patriotic Fund.” Straits Times, May 15, 1941, 10. —“Child’s Corpse.” Straits Times, May 12, 1957, 7. —“Coolie Deathtrap.” Straits Times, October 16, 1945, 2.

! 300! —“Dangerous to Let Highfalutin Ideas Go Undemolished: MM.” Straits Times, August 20, 2009. http://news.asiaone.com/News/the+Straits+Times/Story/ A1Story20090820-162122.html —“Death of the Seihk.” Straits Times, July 8, 1856, 4. —“Depressed Class View.” Straits Times, June 6, 1947, 8. —“Doing Their Bit for the Fighting Forces.” Straits Times, December 14, 1939, 8. —“Growth of Trade Unionism Among Estate Labourers, Real Leadership Required: New Association Formed.” Straits Times, April 26, 1941, 14. —HUANG, Lijie. “Media Development Authority Bans Elangovan’s Play Stoma.” The Straits Times, January 9, 2013. Accessed March 16, 2013. http://www. straitstimes.com/breaking-news/lifestyle/story/media-development-authority- bans-elangovans-play-20130109&. —“India’s Untouchables.” Straits Times, April 5, 1913, 8. —“Indian Dead in Rochore Canal.” Straits Times, January 10, 1948, 7. —“Indian Football Clubs: Proposal for Singapore Association.” Straits Times, January 21, 1928, 10. —“Indian Reformer Arrives: Untouchables’ Champion in Singapore.” Straits Times, December 26, 1929, 14. —“Indian Team for Malaya.” Straits Times, January 18, 1951, 7. —“Indian to Discuss Caste Distinctions.” Straits Times, October 14, 1946, 5 —“Indians Mass Meeting of Protest, Strong Resentment of Remarks in Jubilee Souvenir: Appeal to Government.” Straits Times, May 29, 1935, 13. —“Johore Bahru Indian Meeting.” Straits Times, September 5, 1940, 10. —“Labour in Malaya and Ceylon.” Straits Times, November 10, 1919, 10. —“Lalat.” Straits Times, 4 November 1920, 8. —“Malaya and Labour.” Straits Times, January 23, 1920, 10. —“Malayan Tamils Learn Hindustani.” Straits Times, August 3, 1941, 3. —“Man Stabbed, Affray Between Different Caste Hindus.” Straits Times, August 24, 1932, 14. —“Mr. S. C. Goho Dies in Calcutta.” Straits Times, July 26, 1948, 5. —“Municipal Strike: Coolies “Pampered” and Splendidly Housed.” Straits Times, December 10, 1936, 10. —“Planter’s Complaint: Charge Against Coolies Dismissed.” Straits Times, July 16, 1925, 10.

! 301! —“Railroad of Death, Grim Story of How 100,000 Died in Nip Slavery.” Straits Times, February 17, 1946, 2. —“Restriction of Asiatic Immigration.” Straits Times, May 29, 1903, 4. —“Sacred Soil.” Straits Times, June 10, 1986, 3. —“Sikh’s Body in Canal.” Straits Times, June 14, 1957, 9. —“Stop Caste Organisation Move, Plea.” Straits Times, December 22, 1951, 9. —“Sundram Iyer Cup.” Straits Times, November 3, 6. —“Tamils Welcome the AIF.” Straits Times, February 24, 1941, 10. —“The Problem of Local Born Indians: Must Declare Allegiance to Malaya.” Straits Times, March 9, 1939, 15. —“Untitled.” Straits Times, December 19, 1940, 10. —“Untitled.” Straits Times, May 16, 1924, 8. —“Untouchables.” Straits Times, April 9, 1913, 10. —“When Jalan Besar Was a Swamp.” Straits Times, July 6, 1950, 8. —“Where They Live in Fear.” Straits Times, June 21, 1954, 5. —“Why Encourage Caste System?” Straits Times, June 22, 1957, 9.

The Singapore Free Press (Singapore) ! —“Caste System Ending.” Singapore Free Press, November 15, 1949, 8. —“Malaya has Untouchables.” Singapore Free Press, August 15, 1946, 5.

The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advisor (Singapore) ! —“A Gratifying Sign: Interest in Public Affairs.” Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advisor, October 29, 1926, 7. —“Disorderly Scenes at Conference: Objection to “Derogatory” Description: Strong Opposition of Tamil Reform Party.” Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advisor, January 1, 1936, 3. —“Caste System Ending,” The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advisor, November 15, 1949, 8. —“Ceylon Tamils’ Fund for Fighter Plane.” Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, September 25, 1941, 7.

! 302! —“Grievances of Indians in Malaya.” Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, June 9, 1939, 3. —“Indian Caste.” Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, September 7, 1912, 6. —“Indians in Conference: The Standing Committee’s Meeting. Labourer’s Land Settlement.” The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, March 26, 1929, 5. —“Protest Against New Tamil Association.” Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, May 2, 1941, 9 —“Singapore Tamils and Hindi.” Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, March 9, 1940, 4. —“Social Service.” Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advisor, December 23, 1927, 9. —“Spotlight on Caste Titles, by a Malayan Indian.” Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, March 17, 1951, 3. —“Untitled.” The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, March 23, 1929, 8. —“Untouchables Appeal for Enlistment.” The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, July 31, 1942, 10.

Today Online (Singapore) ! —“The Power of Stories.” Today Online, August 15, 2011. Accessed August 20, 2011. Todayonline.com

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! 303! —“Greater E. Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” Young India 1, no. 20, July 18, 2603 (1943), 7. —“Indians in East Asia.” Young India, August 1, 2303 (1943), 7. —“More Volunteer Training Centres.” Young India, July 25, 2603 (1943), 3. —“Netaji’s Call for Total Mobilisation.” Young India, July 25, 2603 (1943), 3. —“Opening of Women’s Training Camp.” Young India, October 24, 2603 (1943), 9. —“War Declaration.” Young India, October 31, 2603 (1943), 4-7. —“Women Join Freedom War.” Young India, July 18, 2603 (1943), 8.

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! 319! III. Interviews ! All interviews conducted by John Solomon.

Mrs. D. Jawharilal —. January 8, 2012, Singapore. M.P. Samy —. December 18, 2011, Singapore. —. January 29, 2011, Singapore. M. Subramaniam —. January 24, 2012, Singapore. Sellapan Ramanathan, —. February 16, 2011, Singapore. Thyagarajan Panghanathan, —. December 12, 2010, Singapore. V. Thamizhmaraiyan, —. December 12, 2010, Singapore. —. December 24, 2011, Singapore. —. December 31, 2011, Singapore. !

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