Colonial Visions, Postcolonial Revisions

Book excerpt: 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.