Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- I Agency and Resistance
- 1 Negotiating Power in Colonial Natal: Indentured Migrants in Natal, 1860–1911
- 2 Stewed Plums, Baked Porridge and Flavoured Tea: Poisoning by Indian Domestic Servants in Colonial Natal
- 3 Labour Resistance in Indenture Plantations in the Assam Valley
- 4 A Forgotten Narrative of the Satyagraha Campaign: The Treatment of Prisoners between 1907 and 1914
- 5 Toilers across the Seas: Racial Discrimination and Political Assertion among Sikhs in Canada
- II Remigration
- 6 The Remigration of Hindostanis from Surinam to India, 1878–1921
- 7 Not So Anchored: The Remigration of Indians within the Caribbean Region
- 8 On the Move: Remigration in the Indian Ocean, 1850–1906
- III Gender and Family
- 9 Intimate Lives on Rubber Plantations: The Textures of Indian Coolie Relations in British Malaya
- 10 Labouring under the Law: Exploring the Agency of Indian Women under Indenture in Colonial Natal, 1860–1911
- 11 Gujarati ‘Passenger Indians’ in the Eastern Cape since 1900: Business, Mobility, Caste and Community
- 12 The Eurasian Female Workforce and Imperial Britain: Harnessing Domestic Labour by People of Mixed Racial Descent
- IV Legacies
- 13 After the Long March: Colonial-Era ‘Relief’ for Burma Indian Evacuees in Visakhapatnam District, 1942–1948
- 14 Opposing the Group Areas Act and Resisting Forced Displacement in Durban, South Africa
- 15 Indo-Fijians: From Agency to Abjection
- 16 New and Old Diasporas of South South Asia: Sri Lanka and Cyber-Nationalism in Malaysia
- About the Contributors
- Index
9 - Intimate Lives on Rubber Plantations: The Textures of Indian Coolie Relations in British Malaya
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 December 2023
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- I Agency and Resistance
- 1 Negotiating Power in Colonial Natal: Indentured Migrants in Natal, 1860–1911
- 2 Stewed Plums, Baked Porridge and Flavoured Tea: Poisoning by Indian Domestic Servants in Colonial Natal
- 3 Labour Resistance in Indenture Plantations in the Assam Valley
- 4 A Forgotten Narrative of the Satyagraha Campaign: The Treatment of Prisoners between 1907 and 1914
- 5 Toilers across the Seas: Racial Discrimination and Political Assertion among Sikhs in Canada
- II Remigration
- 6 The Remigration of Hindostanis from Surinam to India, 1878–1921
- 7 Not So Anchored: The Remigration of Indians within the Caribbean Region
- 8 On the Move: Remigration in the Indian Ocean, 1850–1906
- III Gender and Family
- 9 Intimate Lives on Rubber Plantations: The Textures of Indian Coolie Relations in British Malaya
- 10 Labouring under the Law: Exploring the Agency of Indian Women under Indenture in Colonial Natal, 1860–1911
- 11 Gujarati ‘Passenger Indians’ in the Eastern Cape since 1900: Business, Mobility, Caste and Community
- 12 The Eurasian Female Workforce and Imperial Britain: Harnessing Domestic Labour by People of Mixed Racial Descent
- IV Legacies
- 13 After the Long March: Colonial-Era ‘Relief’ for Burma Indian Evacuees in Visakhapatnam District, 1942–1948
- 14 Opposing the Group Areas Act and Resisting Forced Displacement in Durban, South Africa
- 15 Indo-Fijians: From Agency to Abjection
- 16 New and Old Diasporas of South South Asia: Sri Lanka and Cyber-Nationalism in Malaysia
- About the Contributors
- Index
Summary
On 13 September 1935, Muthusamy, an Indian coolie from the Haron Estate, Klang, in British Malaya (henceforth Malaya), was charged with enticing away a married woman, Thavakka, who was a coolie and the wife of Rengasamy, another coolie at the same estate. During the trial, it was established that Rengasamy married Thavakka in India in 1927, just before they arrived in Malaya at the Haron Estate. In his statement, Rengasamy claimed that Muthusamy had begun taking his meals with the couple from August 1934, and in March 1935 the latter enticed Thavakka away from him. Muthusamy, on the contrary, claimed that during the previous year he had been depositing all his earnings with Rengasamy for safe keeping, and in March 1935, when he demanded the money back from Rengasamy, the latter offered his wife instead of the money. Furthermore, Muthusamy tried to establish that he had initially refused the offer, but upon the pleas and eagerness of Thavakka, he agreed, and they proceeded to an estate in Ipoh where they began to live as ‘husband and wife’. After hearing the case, the magistrate convicted Muthusamy and sentenced him to three years of rigorous imprisonment.
The investigation and verdict on the Muthusamy and Rengasamy case was covered in a number of local newspapers, as were most ‘enticement’ cases in Malaya. Such cases were not uncommon in transnational migrant labour communities in colonial plantation societies. Colonial administrators, while dealing with incidences of domestic trouble, kidnapping, crimes of passion and other misdemeanors often used stereotypical labels of ‘victim’ and ‘enticer’ to categorise colonised subjects, but stereotyping did not always prove helpful for either administrators or their subjects. The frequent recurrence of incidents involving acts of ‘wife enticement’3, sexual jealousy and partner or spouse desertion amongst immigrant Indian coolies in Malaya sparked intense debate amongst colonial administrators both in India and Malaya from 1900 to 1940. The discourses that arose in the wake of such incidents offer many clues about the nature of Indian coolie life in British Malaya, particularly the nature of intimate gender relations.
Due largely to the demographics of early Indian immigration, historical research on Indian coolies in Malaya has tended to focus on male immigrants and their work as coolies, kanganis and chettiars. This emphasis has resulted in complete silence regarding Indian coolie women or gender relations between coolie migrants within colonial plantation societies.
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- Beyond IndentureAgency and Resistance in the Colonial South Asian Diaspora, pp. 201 - 215Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024