On the 2nd of July 2012, Hindraf files
a civil action on behalf of the marginalized Indian community in Malaysia against
the UK Government in the High Court of Wales and England calling into account
the British Government for their role in the antecedents leading up to the
severe marginalization of the Indian poor in Malaysia today.
The key questions that Hindraf seeks answers for
in this civil action are:
1) If the British are solely responsible for the
presence of most of the Indian poor in Malaysia today, do they also not share responsibility for what is happening to
the Indian poor in Malaysia today? After all the Indians were brought into the country by them
under their watch for over 150 years. It is now just over 50 years since they
left.
3) Is what happened in 1957 so remote from what
is happening in 2012 to render Hindraf’s case academic? Namibia is calling
into account the genocide of several hundred thousands of their people by the
German colonialists today, what happened in the early 1900s. Armenia is still
calling into account the Turks for the Turkish genocide of more than a million
of their people again in the early 1900s. The Jews are still calling into
account all those responsible for the Holocaust of the 1930s and 1940s. In this
case the aggrieved Malaysian Indians are calling into account the devastating
effects on several generations of Indians that has left them without systemic
protection as an enfeebled minority.
4) The UK was
instrumental in establishing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1949
at the United Nations. Are we to take it that such a declaration which is not
even a legally binding one on nations can be more circumspect in their
statement of Human Rights than one which defines a whole new nation. What they
left Malaya with, was an entrenched two tiered citizenship in perpetuity, defying
relevance to the most fundamental of these Human Rights principles. In the
process they created a politico-legal basis that has led to the development of
an institutionalized racist regime here in our country.
These are only the key issues and questions that
will be raised. There are other issues and questions that Hindraf seeks answer
for as well – and those will come out in the course of the case. Armed with
documentary evidence collated from archives around the world, it is now making
a claim in the British courts for declarations by the British courts about the
reneged role and responsibility of the colonial British Government to the
Indian marginalized poor in the country that they and only they, were
responsible for creating in Malaysia.
When history came calling and the British had to
pack up and leave Malaya, in 1957 how did they leave, after having reaped huge profits on the
backs of the people of this country? Did they recognize their full historical
obligations to all the peoples of the country? A significant portion Malayan population
– their creation, had been uprooted from India and brought
here to an alien land. Did they recognize any obligations to these people? Did they not anticipate or think about what
would happen to this enfeebled community after they left? As long as they were
around, the Indian coolie was still an asset to the Empire. The dynamics would
certainly shift after they left - were they not savvy enough to recognize this.
Yet even as the British colonialists left in
1957, they only cared about their strategic and security interests in the
region, so that their wealth in Malaya, Singapore, North Borneo, Sarawak and Brunei would be protected. They had just lost India, Burma and Srilanka.
To achieve this narrow end, they did what they always knew best - to collude
with the local elite of the day. They left a politico-legal system that took
only the convergence of interests of the departing British and the new elite to
whom they would hand over power into consideration. They saw no reason to see
any more. They justified everything they did to achieve this with their typical
imperial manipulations. But the processes of history cannot be subverted by
these treacherous manipulations. Surely we see the outcome today of that manipulation,
a steadily deteriorated institutionalized racist system – a subtle, pervasive
and increasingly aggressive racist system, that today denies equal
opportunities to a large section of the Malaysian people and in its worst
manifestation basic life opportunities to those at the tail-end of the whip –
the marginalized and poor Indians.
Hindraf is calling into question the role of the
British Colonial Government in creating a politico-legal system in Malaya on their departure, when they knew full
well they had all the political and military muscle they needed, to do much
otherwise. The British obsession of the day was however only narrowly
circumscribed around securing of their wealth after their departure. They chose
to play the ethnicity variable to this advantage – created two tiered citizenry
in their usual ambiguous imperial style to please an elite and to protect their
interests post 1957. If you look at the departure of the British throughout
their former dominions, it is striven with the results of this kind of imperial
manipulations – large ethnic, sectarian, religious and linguistic divisions
persist in this so-called British Commonwealth
Three major historical processes
and factors have to be clearly understood in order that the responsibility of
the British/Malaysian Indian problem of today can be fully grasped. This is
necessary to understand why Hindraf is in the first place pursuing the matter
in the British courts - so far away and on a matter that took place a long time
ago. Without knowing these truths it will be easy to pass off Hindraf’s
initiative as mere political theatre.
The First factor and the
most significant factor was the growth of capitalism in Great and Greater
Britain, fuelled by the Industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th
Centuries. Significant accumulation of capital and expansion of demand and
consumption occurred in this period even after the loss of their American
British colonies in the late 18th century. The Industrial revolution
produced many significant innovations that accelerated these developments. Great Britain produced the largest ships of the time, produced
the most lethal of guns, created increasingly powerful machinery for industry,
connected up the British
Empire with telegraphic
connectivity and produced a finance industry that both grew on and fed these
innovations while creating new enabling opportunities for these developments.
These together created the conditions necessary for the acquisition of a large
Empire by a geographically small nation.
The demand for the raw
produces of far eastern colonies of tin, coffee, sugar, tea, pepper, spices and
rubber increased substantially with profits skyrocketing in this trade. The
trade in these commodities was originally carried out by the East India Company – a monopoly joint stock company
established in the 1600s who effectively governed slices of the globe on behalf
of the British Crown. Only after the Indian Sepoy Mutiny in 1857 was the power
formally transferred to the Crown directly
- to Queen Victoria and her representative Governor – General as the
head of the British possessions in India. With the demise of the Monopoly of the East India
Company trade began to accelerate between the colonies and the Great Britain. India then became the centre piece for the growth of the
British Empire post Americana. This is the second of the factors that must be
understood.
India served as the bulwark for the Empire in providing a multifaceted second
base for the control and growth of the Empire. India was the second administrative centre, a second
military base; a second base for labor after Africa was lost on the abolishment of slavery, a second huge market for the
expanding production at home. India besides providing a steady feed of revenues
to Great Britain effectively paid for all these services to the burgeoning
Empire all by herself – what a deal!
The Imperial need for
profits found synergistic opportunities in the factors prevailing in the
colonies - land, climate, labor and political control. The British Government
created new policies in the colonies facilitating British investments - one of
key ones of which was the labor policy. The abolition of slavery created a
shortage of labor in the colonies. The local labor force in most of the
colonies resisted moving out from their traditional vocations in large enough
numbers to serve the growing British appetite. Britain decided to emigrate a
very large amount of laborers from their second base in India initially to the
sugar producing colonies- Mauritius, Fiji Island, Caribbean islands of Jamaica,
British Guiana, and Trinidad, Grenada, St. Lucia, Natal in South Africa,
Ceylon, Burma and Malaya– most of these colonies having neither
strong local political and administrative organizations nor an economic base beyond their rivers, coasts and fields and herds.
And very conveniently, British
India successfully
satisfied the needs of the voracious British appetite for labor in the Plantation enterprises and for the infrastructure works
needed to facilitate the exploitation of the colonial opportunities.
The Indian 'coolies'
(indentured laborers) sent into Mauritius from 1834 came to be
regarded as the most important early immigrants of this type. In 1844,
emigration was increased to include Jamaica, British Guiana, and Trinidad. Emigration was legalized
to Grenada in 1856 and St. Lucia in 1858. In Natal, one of the early
South African republics, the system of indentured labor began in 1860.
Indentured labor migration to Malaya actually began in the 1830s but only accelerated after 1874, when the
British expanded their control to the Federated
Malay States of Perak, Selangor, and Negri Sembilan. It
was after the effective takeover do we see an exponential rise in investments from
the UK and the migration of Indian coolies into Malaya. This is the third factor to be understood
– the creeping colonial control of Malaya.
By 1913 British capital investments in Malaysia amounted to 40 million Straits Dollars, by 1923 it had risen to more
than a 100 million. The area under rubber cultivation grew rapidly from 20,200
Hectares in 1900 to 219,000 in 1919 and 1,320,000 hectares in 1938. Correspondingly
the population of Indian coolies brought in by the British Colonial
Administration and settled in Malaysia rose from 268,269 in 1911 and 470,180 in 1921 and 612,487 in 1931. By 1918,
exports of rubber from Malaya amounted to about 50 per cent of the world’s total rubber consumption.
What better explains the presence of a large impoverished population of
Indians in the country than this correlation between the needs of the
plantation enterprises in Malaya and the growth of the Indian coolie workforce?
However it must be said that there were two streams
of migrants that came in from India. One was the
indentured stream or assisted migration which brought the workers in as
‘coolies’ which accounted for the largest portion. The other was the unassisted
stream that came in, both driven by the opportunities afforded by the presence
of a large pool of Indian laborers already in the country and by the need the British had in the other sectors
and services in the country. India again
provided the base for such labor to run the colonies. The Britishers used to
boast that they ran their colonies with only a few thousand of their own kind.
Therefore what happened in Malaya was the Malayan play
of the imperative of the British
Empire for profits. All entirely and only for the profit of
British Enterprises. All other explanations
proffered are just to obscure this one fundamental historical fact to absolve
the Empire of any ongoing responsibility. This was without any doubt a British
design.
In summary Hindraf is really alluding to the
basis of our nation through this case. These are large issues of international
significance, of international law, of historical threads, of moral and
historical obligations and it surely takes a sweeping breadth of the mind to
even conceptualize this, let alone to take it to the courts. Only a weak mind
will pass this off as trivial. Hindraf is really doing a great service to the
Nation.
Do we want a nation based on racist principles or
do we all want a nation that is truly free and truly democratic and just to all
its citizens regardless of color of skin or the custom at home. It is our
opinion that there is not enough political will across the political spectrum
today to address this question within the country. Change cannot therefore be
expected to happen from within any time soon. The issue has to come to a fore; Malaysia has to be seen to be what it is becoming, in the international fora, as
a racist state, if only for the interest of Malaysia and Malaysians.
This change is sorely needed today, because
institutionalized racism is a socially sanctioned value in Malaysia. Unless there is a change in this social value across the entire Malaysian
polity where racism will be seen as a scourge rather than as a protective
mechanism against the other, will there emerge a truly modern Malaysia.
The alternative scenario is a continuation of the
status quo. We are doomed to see a further deterioration of our performance as
a nation if status quo prevails for much longer. But the subjective conditions
have to align with this objective need. The social values have to first change.
The articulation of the issues during the case
will bring these developing tendencies out in full view and we are hopeful that
this will provide impetus we all require to reopen the discourse for a more
robust basis for our nation on a bolder, more futuristic and a substantially
inclusive platform. We hope these openings that Hindraf provides will catalyze
this change.
This is Hindraf’s case in its essence – if you
care to understand it in its depth and with an open mind. We are Human Rights
Defenders of a different order and we use the little resources we have the best
we can, for the interest of all Malaysia and all Malaysians –myopia which is so abundant just does not help this
understanding.
This case against the UK government is
for real. Win or lose in the courts, the Malaysian people will win with this
case just coming to the fore.
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