Colonial Visions, Postcolonial Revisions: Images of the Indian Diaspora in Malaysia

This book offers reflections of the representations of the Indian diaspora of Malaysia according to two spectrums, colonial and postcolonial. It takes seed from the belief that any engagement with the Indian diasporic experience in Malaysia must take into account the role of the pioneer Indian immigrants who carved the niche of existence for the overseas Indian on Malayan soil. It begins by tracing their presence within the terrain of colonial narratives to uncover, not only the ways in which they were subordinated to colonial ideological discourses but also, and more significantly, the suppressed story of coolie resistance that lies under the weight of such masks of conquest. It then moves on to show how postcolonial revisioning is able to reconstruct the Indian immigrants of Malaya as choreographers of the diasporic identity that they have left as the most significant legacy for contemporary Malaysian Indians. This book ultimately reveals the politics of Malaysian Indian identity from colonised to globalised grounds, and the ways in which the subaltern spaces of the former can be reclaimed and reterritorialised in the latter. 'Shantini Pillai offers a challenging way of rethinking the transitions from a colonial to a globalized order through the active role of so-called minority ethnic groups. Focusing on a little discussed topic in global postcolonial studies--Malaysian Indians--she admirably draws attention to multiculturalism, ethnicity, diaspora, migration and coolie labour as issues that emerge during colonial rule and produce the character of globalization, which Pillai rightly suggests cannot be separated from its colonial roots. The book will make a valuable contribution to diaspora studies from the colonial to the postcolonial era.' Gauri Viswanathan, Columbia University, author of Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief