Malaysia saw robust economic growth from the late 1980s, bringing general prosperity and a new confidence among large sections of the populace. Divisive debates over lingering ethnic issues were submerged in the “feelgood” environment of the 1990s. A series of mega-projects took shape after the federal government launched its thirty-year national development blueprint in 1991 to attain developed nation status by the year 2020. Dubbed Vision 2020, it envisioned a nation that is “fully developed in terms of national unity and social cohesion, economy, social justice, political stability, system of government, quality of life, social and spiritual values, national pride and confidence”.

Paradoxically, the socio-economic situation of Indian Malaysians deteriorated during this period with many in the community increasingly feeling angry, neglected and victimized, a theme articulated by Andrew Willford in chapter 24 in this volume. Academic and journalistic3 writings began to refer to the Indians as the “disenfranchised”, the “marginalized”, the “new underclass” or the “forgotten community” in Malaysia and the popular media began to stereotype them as violent criminals and gangsters.

By the turn of the twenty-first century, Vision 2020's goal of creating “a matured, liberal and tolerant society in which all Malaysians are free to practise and profess their customs, cultures and religious beliefs and yet feel that they belong to one nation” appears to have gone awry. In March 2001, ethnic violence broke out in southern Petaling Jaya. Ethnic and religious tensions have resurfaced with greater intensity in the last two years.

This chapter looks at developments in the Indian Malaysian community since the 1980s, the factors that led to its further marginalization and the new challenges it faces with “creeping Islamization”.