Indian Singaporean
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The term Indian Singaporean refers to any Singapore citizen of South Asian ancestry including, most notably, India. Most Indian Singaporeans are second, third or even fourth generation descendants of migrants from the Indian subcontinent to Singapore and Malaysia, which were then known collectively as British Malaya in the pre-World War II colonial era. A small and shrinking number of older Indian Singaporeans are first generation migrants from the subcontinent.
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[edit] History
Indian contact, trade and migration to South East Asia began in ancient times and continued in the British colonial period, from the colonisation of Penang in 1786 to World War II. While the impact on South East Asian civilisation and culture was significant, no large settled communities of ethnic Indians were formed. Under the British, not all migration was voluntary. The earliest Indians to arrive were soldiers, known as sepoys in the British Army, who helped set up the earliest British colonial and military presence in Malaya (the earliest maps in Singapore show areas laid out for the 'sepoy lines'). Following the soldiers came a handful of entrepreneurs like Narayana Pillay, who arrived in Singapore with Sir Stamford Raffles, the settlement's colonial 'founder'. Pillay was a successful businessman, Singapore's first building contractor and founder of the first Hindu temple, the Sri Mariamman Temple. The early settlements in Malaya (called the Straits Settlements), were ruled by the colonial government in Calcutta. When labour was needed to build the settlement's earliest roads, bridges, buildings and other infrastructure, convicts were sent.
The largest group of Indian migrants to Malaya during the colonial period were South Indian (mainly from the Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam language communities, with the Tamils in the majority because they lived in the lands closest to Malaya). Some came as economic migrants and provided a pool of skilled and unskilled labour. A minority were well-educated entrepreneurs and professionals, many occupations being filled along caste and language lines, but the majority of those who came were recruited as 'indentured workers'. Malaya was the world's largest source of rubber, and the native Malays (the Bumiputra) and immigrant Chinese were unwilling to work on the rural plantations, so to protect their investment, the plantation owners closely regulated and supervised their new workers and held them in debt bondage.
A number of groups found their own niches: Sri Lankan Tamils tended to work as clerks, junior civil servants and in the professions; Christian Malayalis from Kerala were English educated and worked mainly in the civil service; Sikhs from the Punjab were the backbone of the armed forces and the police force, and worked as private security guards; Tamil Muslims, Sindhis and Gujaratis were often small traders; and the Tamil Chettiar caste from Tamil Nadu were moneylenders and currency changers.
Given this pattern of migration and settlement, the Indian community in Malaya was fragmented and dispersed unevenly along various cultural and professional lines.
[edit] Modern Singapore
Indians form about 8.4% of the Singapore population. Slightly more than half are Hindus. The remainder are mainly Muslim, or Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists. In terms of language, again, slightly more than half are Tamil, while the rest are Hindi speakers (North Indians), Malayalee, Punjabi, and Gujarati. Historically, Singapore had a smaller proportion of citizens of Indian origin than Malaysia because it did not have any large rubber plantations. However, under very different post-independence policies in Singapore and Malaysia, the socio-economic status and demographic weight of Indians in the two countries has diverged even further, with the propotion of Indians in Singapore overtaking that of their Malaysian counterparts. Meanwhile, Indian Singaporeans tend to outperform Indian Malaysians compared to each other as well as in terms of their relative standing amongst other ethnic groups.
As an avowedly multi-ethnic nation, the Singapore Constitution enshrines Tamil as one of the four official languages of Singapore (along with English, Malay and Mandarin). Deepavali, the Hindu festival of lights, is also a national public holiday. Hindu temples, like the Sri Mariamman Temple, are among the selection of historic places of worship enshrined as National Monuments. Similarly, the Indian community and its culture are represented, officially or unofficially, in many aspects of Singapore life, society and politics.
More than other ethnic groups, Indians are highly stratified in terms of class with little upward mobility. Although a fairly large group occupies the middle and higher sectors of Singaporean society, the community is disproportionately represented at the bottom of the social ladder. This imbalance has been accentuated by the recent emigration of many well-qualified Indian Singaporeans to English-speaking developed countries, especially Australia (this was part of a general migration by upper and middle class but somewhat marginalised cultural minorities like the Peranakans, Eurasians, and gays). The lack of opportunity for the lower class Indians is addressed by the community and the government through nationally-sanctioned ethnic 'self-help' groups, such as the Singapore Indian Development Association (SINDA).
[edit] New waves of migration
From the 1990s onward, Singapore's policy has been actively to attract highly skilled migrants from around the world and this has produced a fairly large expatriate Indian community of well-educated and wealthy professional and business people. It remains to be seen how permanent this migration is. Most have retained their Indian citizenship, although some have been granted Permanent Residence status. Interaction between the local and expatriate Indian community remains ambivalent rather than easy and natural.
Transient foreign workers who come to work in Singapore on short-stay work permits (2 years validity, renewable) as unskilled or semi-skilled workers working in the as domestic workers and construction workers form a third Indian community. There is little interaction between this group and either the expatiate or local Indian communities.
[edit] Names
Because of their linguistic and religious diversity, Indian Singaporeans use a variety of name formats.
Some North Indian groups, such as the Gujaratis and Bengalis, use family surnames, although the Gujaratis may choose whether to merge their father's name with the surname. Sikh men invariably adopt 'Singh' as their surname, while Sikh women adopt 'Kaur', as is their traditional practice. However, some Sikhs have also re-introduced supplementary family or clan names, thus instead of simply 'Charanjit Singh', an individual might adopt the name 'Charanjit Singh Siddhu' for himself or his son.
Following exposure to British colonial bureaucracy, many Tamils placed their father's name after their given name, linked by 's/o' (son of) or 'd/o' (daughter of), e.g. 'Ravi s/o Govindasamy'. In contemporary Singapore, most Indians omit this connector. i.e. simply using 'Ravi Govindasamy'. Although the name now looks more like a Western name format, Govindasamy technically remains the father's name, not the family surname. As such, the individual should be addressed as 'Mr Ravi', rather than 'Mr Govindasamy'. On occasions, the father's name is reduced to an initial, hence 'G. Ravi'. Tamil Muslims would have names in the form: Abdul s/o Rahman, or Abdul Rahman [in contrast to Malay Muslims, who use the connector 'bin' (son of) or 'binte / bte' (daughter of)]. Some South Indian Singaporeans now use their father's name as a surrogate surname (in the Western style), i.e. Ravi calls himself 'Mr Govindasamy' and uses it as a surname for his children, instead of, for example, calling his so 'Arun (s/o) Ravi', he might name him 'Arun Govindasamy' (or even 'Arun Govind').
Some Singaporean Tamils and other south Indians (e.g. Telugus or Malayalees) use their clan or caste-derived names as surnames in the Western mode, e.g. Iyer, Nair, Naidu, etc.
