A Critique on the South Indian Labour Fund and the Malaysian Indian Plantation Workers
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Abstract
This article offers a new perspective on Indian labour in colonial and independent Malaysia through analysis of an important financial resource, the Tamil Immigration Fund (established in 1907) which was subsequently renamed as Indian Immigration Fund (1912) and South Indian Labour Fund (1958). Contrary to the stated objectives of the fund, the colonial government and the post-independence Malaysian government failed to utilise the fund for the benefit of the Indian plantation workers. Existing literature on the fund and Indian labour in Malaya have not emphasised the fact that the fund was never used for the benefit of the South Indian labourers. The fund passed through four important phases in its development across a time span of close to 100 years from 1907–1999. The fund evolved from its role in supplying transient Indian labour force in the colonial period to becoming an agency promoting the welfare of Indian workers and their dependents who adopted Malaya as their own country in the early post-independence era. Unfortunately, the fund was dissolved under the premiership of Dr. Mahathir Mohamad and taken over by the Malaysian Government on 18th November 1999.
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