The street protest by an estimated 30,000 Indian Malaysians in the heart of Kuala Lumpur last Sunday should have sent shock waves to the government.

There has been no such collective public demonstration of their frustration and unhappiness in recent history.

The radical Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) formed only this year had called for this show of mass support for Indian rights.

The coalition was initiated by several concerned lawyers, who are seeking, through a class-action suit, compensation from the British Crown for the colonial enslavement of Indian indentured labour in Malaya for 150 years of British rule. The British are also accused of abandoning the Indian minority to the Malays at the point of independence.

Hindraf also holds that the Federal Constitution, embedding Malay supremacy and Malay special privileges, is unconstitutional. It has filed a law suit against the British government seeking to recompense each Indian Malaysian with 1 million pound sterling for "pain, suffering, humiliation, discrimination and continuous colonisation".

The Sunday event was mainly to be a demonstration at the British High Commission to publise the Hindraf cause.

Other issues which the coalition champions include religious freedom, elimination of poverty of large pockets of Indians, custodial deaths of Indians under police investigation and the like. Its most prominent political actions against the Abdullah Ahmad Badawi government have been protests and petitions over temple demolitions and its unequivocal support for the Article 11 forums.

During the recent temple demolition in Shah Alam, where reportedly 3,000 demonstrators clashed with 300 riot police, Hindraf leaders P Waythamoorthy and P Uthayakumar were among those detained. Hindraf has filed a RM85 million lawsuit against the government for the detention of its leaders.

The plural and split nature of Indian minority politics in Malaysia is both a bane and boon to this community. As long as it remains divided, the Umno-led government can give short shrift or ride roughshod over it, which already seems to be the case during Abdullah's tenure. This said, it might be also argued that many political groups representing different classes and social interests of Indians could better serve the community as a whole.

Malaysia's two million Indian minority population has seen a progressive shrinking in proportional terms since independence from about 12 percent to about 7 percent today, roughly equivalent to the number of non-Malaysian residents. This notwithstanding, Indian social forces, groups and individuals have had a disproportionate presence in political landscape be it in trade unionism, political parties, social activism, in the legal profession and the judiciary.

Mounting insensitivity

Still, I believe the Umno-led government's mounting insensitivity to the Indian community is something that requires some unraveling. Why, one may ask, was the 100-year Sri Maha Mariyaman temple in Shah Alam demolished by the local authorities and this too, on the eve of Deepavali, the Hindu festival of lights?

Taking umbrage, MIC president S Samy Vellu announced the banning of Deepavali 'open house' celebrations by party functionaries, although he retracted this some three hours later.

Many also felt that the holding of the five-day Umno Assembly during Deepavali was insensitive to the community. Umno secretary-general Radzi Sheikh Ahmad's explanation that the prime minister's schedule was very tight evidently cut little ice.

The Umno general assembly itself would not be particularly memorable if not for the now familiar spectacle of Umno Youth leaders kissing and brandishing the keris.

This not too subtle flexing of political muscle confirms for all and sundry that a particular pattern of ethnic politicking is here to stay. Even the moderate 'Pak Lah' in his speech on Nov 7 gave his blessings to keris-rattling and this must be worrisome to the non-Malay communities.

Major fractures in ethnic politics have occurred at various points of time, too many to adumbrate here but suffice it to say that after the May 13 1,969 tragedy, a new multi-cultural pact was embedded in Malaysia's 'ethnocracy'. It's hardly deniable that with every egregious political event, Umno predominance was enhanced and little conceded to the other ethnic communities.

The Kampung Medan incidents in May 2001 are a case in point. The Indian underclass collectively came under a severe bashing which saw six Indians killed and scores injured in an urban slum to which displaced plantation workers had migrated to eek out a living. The event remains shrouded in veil of mystery despite a lengthy governmental investigation while a Tamil book seeking to expose it has been banned.

In October, the Indian-led PPP - no ally of the MIC - was rebuffed crudely by Umno leaders in its bid for more seats to contest in the next general election, which will be probably held early next year. PPP leader M Kayveas and party members were dumbfounded when Umno vice-president and Malacca Chief Minister, Mohd Ali Rustam openly rejected the party's admittedly extravagant request for four parliamentary and 12 state seats. What was even less palatable was that he spoke as 'guest of honour' at the PPP's annual congress!

Fraying at the seams

Issues of ethno-religious sensitivity affecting Indians have peppered Abdullah's tenure, including a slew of legal controversies involving the custody of children with converted spouses, a disputed burial of an Indian convert and the enforced 'rehabilitation' of the Muslim wife of a Hindu spouse.

The two prominent legal controversies were the Shamala and the Moorthy cases. In the first, Shamala's husband was able to take custody of their two children (2 and 4 years) whom he converted to Islam.. Shamala is appealing to the Court of Appeal to nullify the conversion. In the case of Moorthy Maniam @ Mohammad Abdullah, his body was buried with Muslim rites by the Kuala Lumpur religious authorities despite his widow's claim that he had remained a practising Hindu.

At the peak of the Moorthy controversy in January 2005, nine non-Muslim ministers submitted a memorandum to the prime minister for the matter to be brought up for discussion in the cabinet. However, he prevailed on the ministers,after a private discussion with five of them, to withdraw their request.

At about the same time as the conversion controversies, Abdullah himself shelved the initiative for an Inter-faith Commission by civil society organisations and also stopped in mid-2006 the Article 11 group from holding forums on the question of constitutional guarantees of religious freedom which had an important bearing on the Shamala and Moorthy cases.

With Malaysia's ethnocracy fraying at the seams, it may not be surprising that the Indian community as a whole has taken to the streets, although one hastens to add that by all accounts it is a street politics which is assiduously peaceful and premised on the political traditional of civil disobedience inspired by Mahatma Ghandi.

How then, could this new politics affect the general tenor of Indian minority political involvement and participation in the Malaysian political process? Could this new development nudge mainstream Indian political actors out of contention or at the very least devalue their political presence?

It should of course be pointed out that the upper echelons of the Indian community have enjoyed a fair share of political participation (if not largesse) through its political parties such as the MIC. The Indian political elite would therefore be unlikely to give up its current privileges.

This elite would continue to inveigle the Indian community to remain in the mainstream and be a significant player for the BN and Umno-led government in the delivery of votes and seats in constituencies with Indian concentrations of population. MIC's handsome win in the important Ijok by-election in Selangor in April has brought considerable credibility and political mileage to Abdullah's tenure.

However, the Indian community is served not only by the mainstream Barisan Nasional political parties. Many prominent Indians, such as the late unionist V David, were DAP stalwarts. In more recent years, many have joined the multi-ethnic PKR, prominent among whom are human rights lawyer Sivarasa Rasiah and social activist Irene Fernandez. More notoriously, S Nallakarupan took his supporters out of the PKR recently to launch on Nov 25 a new party called the Malaysian Indian United Party.

Apart from political parties, many socially engaged Indians naturally find their way in civil society organisations championing universal causes. Many Indian activists recognise that the Indian underclass, as opposed to its more affluent and middle classes, is not served by the mainstream MIC.

Most importantly, many thinking Indian politicians and activists are now driven to debunk the formula of an ethnocracy in which they will invariably be at the bottom of the pile.

JOHAN SARAVANAMUTTU is former Universiti Sains Malaysia professor of political science, and currently working at a regional research institute.