Hi Anthony, Thanks for the detailed answer. The economist article seemed to suggest that the Indian and Chinese communities were roughly in similar social conditions, though from your response that seems to be not the case.
Also I have also heard about this incident a few years back when Malaysian police rounded up a group of (legal) immigrant workers - mostly Indian computer programmers - and kept them in jail for no apparent reason. It causes quite a bit of controversy at that time and if I remember correctly the Malaysian government had to apologize. If this is what happens to relatively prosperous computer industry professionals... http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/EC13Df03.html -------------------------snip There were around 270 of them, men and women. They were roused from bed between 6 am and 8 am last Sunday, hustled by armed Malaysian policemen out of their posh apartment block in Kuala Lumpur's upmarket Brickfield to a neighboring police station, handcuffed and made to squat in a motor shed for almost 12 hours. They could not make phone calls, nor were they given any reason why they had been arrested. No, the arrested were not illegal immigrants. Nor were they criminals. They were well-educated Indian software professionals working for companies registered in Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor, the information technology project zone running from Kuala Lumpur to the new development of Cyberjaya, a 45-minute drive from the capital. They were in the country at the invitation of the Malaysian government, which, like many IT-human resource scarce governments of the world, sought help from India's now-famed IT pool of talent. -raghu. On 9/25/07, Anthony D'Costa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > FWIW, I spent two days in Kuala Lumpur (KL) last month. I got to speak to an > Indian Malay academic, Cambridge trained, well estblished. He came from an > impoverished family, whose goal in life was to become a policeman. He could > not because of his eyesight so was encouraged to continue studying. I also > met one his students, who represents the Indian community politically. He > was linked to Anwar Ibrahim in UMNO (in Malaysia you cannot do damn thing if > you don't work through UMNO). Acoording to him there were good prospects > under Anwar for resolving these ethnic divisions but alas Mahathir (who was > increasingly becoming insecure) trumped up charges and eliminated Ibrahim. I > also talked to an Indian taxi driver (a long one hour ride from the airport). > I should mention taxi drivers are always a great source of information. I > attended a conference (of the Univ of Malay), where 99.9% of > the speakers were Malays. I did get a sense of tension of such divisions as > several speakers brought it up. The conference was on governance issues.
