Book review: John Solomon,A Subaltern History of the Indian Diaspora in Singapore: The Gradual Disappearance of Untouchability 1872–1965

Human being, in Marx’s understanding,

much as he may… be a particular individual (and it is just his particularity which makes him an individual, and a real individual social being), is just as much the totality—the ideal totality—the subjective existence of thought and experienced society present for itself. (Marx, 2017, p. 105)

Experienced societies in different parts of the world have given birth to different manifestations of human beings—individual as well as social. Plural as the Indian societies have been, historical contexts have given way to a unique particularity, called caste, which is at the same time a subjective phenomenon and a brutal physical experience. Its distinctiveness has been added by its dual—opposite to each other—role of unifying the societies in a peculiarly divisive manner. It is caste that particular individuals make their abode into, and find in it their social existence; and again, this social existence incessantly confronts a harsh reality, where social existence of some other individuals gets contingent to the exploitation of the former—both physically and subjectively. The kind of divisiveness invoked through caste distinction gains its strength by dehumanizing the human beings—making them untouchable to those who have achieved a higher social, and in turn economic and political, status by dint of an artificially manufactured superiority over the subjugated ones. Strong as it is, the formation of dehumanized human identity through this process of extraordinary subjugation has not been a singular story, let alone simple. ‘A Sense of identity’, Amartya Sen asserts,

can be a source of pride and of comfort, but it can also be the basis of irritation, hostility, and even violence… There are serious implications—ethical and epistermic—of particular affirmations of identity and they can influence the priorities we choose (or weights we attack) to the interests and concerns of different groups with which socially identify. (Sen, 2004, p. 9)

Thus, understanding particular historical processes of social identification, in a specific political-economical and geographical context, can not only be important in academic term but also in terms of practical action concerning the shaping and reshaping of human progress. John Solomon’s study on the re-formation of identity of the Tamil migrants in Singapore just serves this purpose.

History of Singapore, following the founding of the country by Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles, FRS (6 July 1781–5 July 1826), Lieutenant-Governor of the Dutch East Indies (1811–1816) and Lieutenant-Governor of Bencoolen (1818–1824), is intertwined with Tamil migrant labourers to the island. The human-made terrible famine in the erstwhile Madras Presidency of British India, of which Tamil Nadu was a central constituency, made the Tamils of lower social order, the untouchables, easy prey to the British colonizers who had plantations all over East Asia, including Malaysia and Singapore. Age-old exploitation and sub-human living conditions of the Tamil untouchables, including the Pariah, Chakkaliyar and Pallar communities, was aggravated further by the famine. ‘[A] report by the protector of immigrants in 1879 suggests that during that year many indentured recruits were not suited for agricultural works’. Solomon quotes the Protectors report:

Every gang of man we receive now-a-days contains a number of useless characters, varying from only a small percentage of fourth or even sometimes a third of the whole…How they lived in their own countries is a puzzle. Probably as thiefs (sic), beggars, or scavengers. (p. 40)

Solomon tells the reader the story of construction of a cosmopolitan identity from the roots embedded with caste, poverty and labour hiring, carried with them to Singapore by the indentured labourers. Migration to Singapore also involved some Tamil traders and merchants, who formed the elites of the Indian migrants in Singapore and had an important role in the identity transformation.

Present Singapore has a 500,000 strong Tamil population, most of whose ancestors formed part of the indentured labour gangs transported here in the nineteenth century. Tamil has been recognized as one of the four official languages of Singapore. Interestingly, although Tamil is taught as a second language in all government schools from the primary to junior college levels, and is an examinable subject at all major nationwide examinations, and there is a daily Tamil newspaper, a full-time radio station and a full-fledged TV channel, people of Tamil origin have been choosing English or other languages over Tamil. Currently, the population with Tamil roots form about 10 percent of the total population of Singapore, but only a little above 3 per cent of them speak Tamil at home. Clearly, there has been a larger Singaporean identity in the making.

This change is connected with a complex historical process that Solomon examines in detail using official records, other documents and ethnographic narratives. While the main inquiry of the study involved how the deep-rooted discriminatory elements, namely caste and untouchability, ‘did not undergo a steady and gradual decline’ (p. 208), it presents the historical processes in a broadly inclusive manner and finds the roots of changes in the interactions between Singapore’s social history, a major component of which has been the indentured labour immigration, and the complex politico-social dynamics in India. The growing cosmopolitan nature of Singapore had much to do on one hand with the global changes, especially the expansion and shrinking of the Empire, and the rise of national movement led by Congress and the emergence of the Tamil self-respect movement under the banner of the Tamils Reform Society—the two diametrically opposite currents, one thriving for a greater Indian nationality and the other hoping for cessation from India after independence.

Aside from describing the complex history, with all their unity, diversity and opposition—unity in diversity as well as diversity in unity—Solomon illuminates the reader about a distinct and powerful yet often underrated element of change—agency of the untouchables in, first shaping and then the reshaping of the caste and untouchable identity in Singapore. That the untouchables were not mere passive recipients of hostility and benevolence, rather they had contributed through their agentic role in the reshaping of their identities—from untouchables to Tamils, Tamils to Indians and Indians to Singaporean—is not only relevant for the understanding of Singapore’s history but also has the potential of contributing to the understanding of social change elsewhere, especially India, a country suffering from the venomous divisiveness based on caste, and fuelling to the subjugation of millions by an atrocious few.