While attending a small function in Puchong during the summer of 2006, a suburb of Kuala Lumpur, and in a neighbourhood populated mainly by working-class Tamils, this author was told by a middle-aged Tamil man, “Every Indian is burning inside … it is better we go back to India.” He, together with a group of other Tamil men, discussed the “plight of Indians” in Malaysia. The conversation touched on many issues. Among them, three fairly recent events animated their discussion. First, the so-called “Kampung Medan riots” of 2001 was in the news once again, now being purportedly blamed on the “anti-social behavior of Indian youths” within a newly authored textbook produced for teaching “ethnic relations” within the public university. This had inflamed Tamil sentiments. There were other issues “burning” around the table in this conversation, and in others like them heard throughout the summer of 2006. A number of Hindu temples, some of them quite old, had been demolished in recent months, despite vociferous and spirited protests by devotees, and concerns raised by activists, the Malaysia Hindu Sangam, and even the Malaysian Indian Congress. Though the state had not ordered these demolitions, many Indians increasingly see development, the law, and justice to be skewed in order to protect the privileges of Malay Muslims over others. That is, the demolitions of temples are increasingly perceived, rightly or wrongly, to be part of the tacit, if not explicit, project of Islamization and “Malayaization” of the urban landscape. A third issue that produced an “Indian” sense of outrage concerned the so-called conversion of Malaysia's Mt Everest hero, M. Moorthy, to Islam. The seizing of his body after his tragic death from his immediate family, his subsequent Muslim burial, on the grounds of his purported conversion, and the refusal of the civil courts to hear evidence of his continued Hindu practice, shattered not only his widow's life, but that of the Tamil Hindu community's confidence in the government to protect minority rights against the “Islamic extremists” who are perceived to be making political inroads under Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's watch.