COMMENT | It is a sad thing to contemplate that many Tamils don’t know how to read and write Tamil. I have come across many 'coconuts', which refers to a Tamil who does not speak the language, but English.

The story of my late grandfather Renu, who worked as a mandor at the Sungai Merbau Estate in Tanjong Malim, relates to the thousands of Indians brought in by the British in the late 1800s as indentured labourers to work in the various plantations across British Malaya – mainly at sugarcane plantations, until rubber took over.

Similarly, thousands of ethnic Chinese labourers were shipped in by the British to work in the tin mines.

The colonial period was when the British developed the economy of the states in British Malaya. They needed labourers to work in the rubber plantations and also to build roads and railway tracks...