Malaysia’s South Indian ‘Coolies’: Legacies of Imperialism, Colonial Capitalism and Racism

This chapter takes on from Shaharil Talib’s work to discuss the impact of ideological underpinnings of imperialism, colonial capitalism and racism on South Indian ‘coolies’ who were recruited through a ‘new system of slavery’ to toil in the development of the colonial economy of British Malaya. The ‘coolies’ who were recruited mainly through coercion and deception were bonded into an asymmetrical indentured and kangany labour contract to serve under the socially constructed class-cum-race-based hierarchical authority of the European Planters’ Raj buttressed by the colonial state. On arrival in the colony, the ‘coolies’ were deployed to labour in servitude with meagre wages in highly regimented, exploitative and restricted plantation and public sector work enclaves. The chapter outlines and analyses the impact of the constellation of exploitative and repressive policies of British imperialism, the colonial state and colonial capitalism on the proletarianized South Indian ‘coolie’. The changing capitalist structure combined with the perpetuation of the pro-capitalist and class-cum-race policy strategies, its continuation has infantilized the subjugated South Indian ‘coolies’ to be relegated to the status of an oppressed, marginalized, dispossessed and precarious underclass to be ‘mercilessly left to their fate’.