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Singapore The Indians
The Indians, although a component of Singapore's
society since
its founding, were in the 1980s its most immigrant-like
community.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Indian
men had
worked in Singapore, sending money home to families and
wives in
India, whom they would visit every few years. Indian women
and
complete Indian families were rare before World War II,
and the
Indian sex ratio in 1931 was 5,189 men for every 1,000
women. The
1980 census showed 1,323 Indian men for every 1,000 women;
most of
the surplus males were over age 60. In the 1980s, the
"Little
India" off Serangoon Road contained many dormitories where
elderly
single men lived, as well as some shops and workshops
whose owners,
in the traditional pattern, housed and fed a workforce of
middleaged and elderly men who might or might not have wives and
children
in India or Sri Lanka. Significant issues for the Indian
community
included securing residence status, citizenship, or
entrance for
the Indian families of men who had worked in Singapore for
decades
and for the Brahman priests who were necessary for Hindu
religious
life.
Almost two-thirds (64 percent) of the Indian population
were
Tamils from southeastern India's Tamil Nadu state; some
Tamils also
came from Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka. The great
diversity of the
Indian populace was indicated by the census category
"other
Indians," who made up a substantial 19 percent of the
group,
followed by Malayalis (8 percent); Punjabis, mostly Sikh
(8
percent); and Gujaratis (1 percent). Like the Straits
Chinese, some
of Singapore's Indians adopted English as a first
language, a
change facilitated by the widespread use of English in
India, where
it had become another Indian language. Indians were the
most
religiously diverse of Singapore's ethnic categories; an
estimated
50 to 60 percent were Hindu, 20 to 30 percent Muslim, l2
percent
Christian, 7 percent Sikh, and 1 percent Buddhist
(see Religion
, this ch.). Indian immigrants, like those of other
nationalities,
had been primarily recruited from among poor farmers and
laborers,
which meant that they included a large proportion (perhaps
onethird ) of untouchables. In Singapore untouchables were
usually
referred to by the more polite Tamil term Adi-Dravidas,
meaning
pre-Dravidians. Although Tamils made up nearly two-thirds
of the
Indian population and Tamil was one of the country's four
official
languages (along with English, Malay, and Mandarin
Chinese), by
1978 more Indians claimed to understand Malay (97 percent)
than
Tamil (79 percent). The 20 to 30 percent of the Indian
population
who were Muslims tended to intermarry with Malays at a
fairly high
rate and to be absorbed into the Malay community,
continuing a
centuries-old process of assimilation of Indian males to
Malay
society.
The linguistic and religious diversity of the Indian
population
was matched by their high degree of occupational
differentiation.
Indians were represented at all levels of the occupational
hierarchy in numbers roughly proportional to their share
of the
total population. Within the Indian category, occupational
and
education attainment was far from equitably distributed.
The
untouchables for the most part did unskilled or
semiskilled labor,
while the Jaffna Tamils and the Chettia caste, who were
traditionally moneylenders and merchants, were often
professionals
and wealthy businessmen. After World War II, caste
received no
public recognition in Singapore. Untouchables were free to
enter
Hindu temples, and food was distributed at temple
festivals without
regard for relative degrees of purity and pollution.
Members of the
Indian community were reluctant to discuss caste in
public, but it
continued to play a decisive role in marriage
arrangements. The
Indians were the most likely of all ethnic groups to
attempt to
arrange marriages for their children, or at least to
restrict the
choice of marriage partners to acceptable caste
categories.
Although the relatively small size of the Indian
population and the
disparate mixture of local caste groups from large areas
of
southern India made it difficult for most families to
insist on
strict caste endogamy (marrying only within the caste),
Hindu
marriages were made within a tripartite hierarchy. The
highest
level was occupied by Brahmans and Chettias, who attempted
to
maintain caste endogamy or at least to marry only members
of other
high castes. Mid-level caste Hindus intermarried with
little
difficulty, but the marriages of low-caste or outcaste
category of
former hereditary washermen, barbers, and untouchables
were
restricted to their own circle.
Data as of December 1989
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