Sinnappa Arasaratnam, an icon of history from the Universiti of Malaya, in his book ‘Indians in Malaysia and Singapore ‘had mentioned that Indian indentured labourers had already been receiving regulated wages in accordance with the Straits Settlement Ordinance of 1885.

This regulatory trend continued to mould their lifestyles of receiving fortnightly wages like the miners of Newcastle-upon-Tyne for the next 80 years. Their institutionalised lives and living styles were governed by an euphemistic antidote of slavery including flogging and complete docility to the colonial masters .

They were strictly controlled by the Labour Codes of 1911 and 1927 and lastly the Rump Labour Code of 1933 of the Federated Malay States, Non-Federated Malay States and the Straits Settlements.

The land of the Malays, too, was not less demarcated than the way the Tamil workers were physically and mentally humiliated. For well over 80 years, they were the largest populated people in the Malay Peninsula. Even on the Aug 31, 1957 there were not less than three million Indians - largely Tamil plantation and urban municipal workers - of a population of seven million people.

They were picked up from all kinds of ‘cheri' or dissipated villages of South India especially from the vicinities of Madras and Bangalore, cleansed with pesticides and docketed around their necks with the name of their rubber estates and shipped under the most deplorable conditions not much better than the Negro slaves.

Of the over 120 million people all over the world who migrated in the beginning of the 20th century, almost 12 million were South Indian labourers of mostly the lowest order of social categorisation - the ‘Untouchables'.

But then, they too were some of the first people to be politically and socially motivated to rise up against the colonial masters. Despite their abject poverty and servile mentality, the Tamil workers became pioneers in the trade union and social reform movements.

However, no one can deny the fact that the coming of the South Indian historian Nilakanta Sastry to then British Malaya in 1933 had stopped the ‘indentured labour trade'. In 1948, their leader V Kanapathy Pillay of the Klang Indian Workers Union was publicly executed by the British colonialists for organising the largest and most powerful leftist movements in the country - the Pan-Malayan Federation of Trade Unions and the Pan-Malayan General Labour Union.

They had a total of 250,000 members at any one time. Most of the members of the unions were socialist and communist sympathisers and were intent on making the Malay Peninsula a communist bastion.

The lesser politically-committed Tamils were members of the Dravidian Movement which was much influenced by the ideology of EV Ramasamy Periayar who mooted anti-Brahminism and a separate land for the South Indians, Dravida Nadu (Dravida Land), and a more egalitarian Tamil society.

The death of V Kanapathy Pillay ended with the birth of the Malaysian Indian Congress in 1948. However, this political movement started by John Thivvy was very much overshadowed by the then pro-colonial labour movement of the National Union of Plantation Workers (NUPW) and the Ahila Malaya Tamilar Sangam (AMTS) known to many as the Pan-Malayan Tamil Movement.

The MIC had the blessings and support of the Jawaharlal Nehru's Indian National Congress while AMTS had had the blessings of EV Ramasamy Periyar and the Dravidian Movement of South India. Hence, even at Malaysian independence day, most of the Tamil workers were not supporters of the MIC but of the Dravidian Movement.

The influential Tamil dailies, Tamil Nesan from Kuala Lumpur and Tamil Murasu from Singapore were supportive of the MIC . At the same time, the leaders of the NUPW at the estate level also become supporters of the MIC.

Later on, the Tamil Student Bell Club initiated by Tamil Murasu evolved into a national movement known as the Tamil Youth Bell Club with strong, influential leaders like the late SA Anbananthan and NR Segaran.

The political future and strength of the MIC depended very much on the demise of the AMTS and Tamil Youth Bell Club. The late Tun Sambanthan was largely responsible for the de-registration of the AMTS while S. Samy Vellu made the Tamil Youth Bell Club his crony movement.

Our readers will realise very much from this brief history that the Tamils, were largely very regulated in their human mentality. While they were regulated by the plantation and municipal cultures at work, they were also very much regulated by the trade unions, social reform movements and political leaders.

However, the Hindu religion nor its movements did not play much of an important or influential community role in their lives. The Tamils could not be termed as having a ‘herded mentality' as described by Nietsche but to some extent, they generally a ‘leader-based' outlook of life.

To this day, they look forward and look up to some kind of people to lead them. They would rather mortgage everything they have and invest in Maika Holdings than individually buy shares on their own accord.

They would trust a leader but not the market. The Chinese outlook seems to be just the opposite.

It is very important to neutrally evaluate the Tamils as a community and involve them in the larger Malaysian society. However, except for Anwar Ibrahim, to some extent, most Tamils have not chosen a leader outside of their community.

In recent years, there appears to be some kind of attitudinal change among the Tamils in accepting the direction of non-Tamil leaders. But nothing much is known if this attitudinal change is largely an ex-parte manifestation or the imminence of change from within.

The Tamils do still remain to this day a much regulated community as they had when they begun to enter this country in the beginning of the 19th century.