Article

India

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

India

India and the Malay World: Trade, Language, and Civilisation

India’s relationship with the Malay Peninsula and the wider Indonesian Archipelago spans millennia, encompassing the transmission of religion, the diffusion of language, the establishment of commercial networks, and the movement of peoples across the Indian Ocean. The archival record of the Society’s journals reveals a sustained scholarly engagement with this relationship, ranging from linguistic-archaeological arguments about the origins of Malay civilisation to the wartime internment of Indian and Chinese subjects in British India during the Second World War. The evidence points to a layered and successive pattern of contact: an early Aryan Hindu phase that introduced foundational religious and administrative vocabulary, a subsequent Dravidian commercial phase that supplied the instruments of trade and navigation, and a later colonial period in which Indian subjects—both Tamil and Bengali—formed permanent communities along the Straits coast [1, pp. 67–74].

Linguistic and Civilisational Foundations

The most systematic early treatment of India’s civilisational influence on the Malay world appears in W.A. O’Sullivan’s 1901 article in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, which argues that while Arab traders were responsible for the introduction of Islam, the broader social and linguistic civilisation of the Malays was derived from India in two successive phases [1, pp. 67–68]. O’Sullivan concedes that nearly every Malay word connected with religious worship is of pure Arabic origin, but insists that the Arabs contributed little beyond religion to the social life and adat (customary law) of the Malays [1, p. 68]. The question he poses is where the balance of Malay civilisation—the arts, social institutions, and unwritten legal codes—originated, and his answer is India.

The first phase, O’Sullivan argues, was a “domination of intellect, if not of conquest” by a genuine Aryan Hindu race from central or northern India, which introduced the foundational Sanskrit vocabulary of Malay—words for religion, plough, time, and other abstract concepts—and established a Hindu civilisation in Java that persisted until 1475 [1, pp. 68–70]. Dutch scholars fix the introduction of Hinduism to Java at the beginning of the sixth century A.D. [1, p. 69]. O’Sullivan explicitly rejects Crawfurd’s theory that the Telugu were the agents of this early civilising, on the grounds that no Telugu vernacular words appear in Malay [1, p. 69].

The second phase was the commercial influence of the Dravidian peoples of Southern India, particularly the Tamils, who arrived as traders and introduced a body of vocabulary connected with commerce, navigation, and everyday material life [1, pp. 70–71]. O’Sullivan marshals extensive etymological evidence to demonstrate this: kapal (ship), kedei (shop), gedong (storehouse), peti (box), cherutu (cigar), badam (almond), kalde (ass), belimbing (fruit), beludu (velvet), bedi (gun), and mempelai (bridegroom) are all identified as pure Tamil words in Malay [1, pp. 71–73]. The Malay word prahu (boat), he notes, is derived from the Tamil padagu, suggesting that the Tamils introduced the Malays to elementary navigation [1, p. 72]. Further, words of Persian, Arabic, and Bengali origin in Malay—meja, baki, kupi, topi, apam—passed through Tamil as an intermediary, confirming that Tamil influence was antecedent to Arabic contact [1, pp. 72–73].

The commercial network between Southern India and the Malay coast was of considerable antiquity. The Portuguese, on first visiting the Straits emporia at the start of the sixteenth century, were “amazed at the concourse of foreign vessels” assembled there, attesting to a long-standing trading relationship [1, p. 71]. Snouck-Hurgronje records that the settlement of Tamils from Southern India in Aceh is of great antiquity, and that considerable Tamil colonies took up permanent residence there [1, pp. 71]. O’Sullivan closes with a counterfactual: had Islam not been introduced by the Arabs, the Tamil commercial presence might have led to a considerable racial fusion along the coasts. In fact, a partial fusion did occur in later centuries, producing the mixed Jawi Pekan community, in which the Bengali element is as strong as the Tamil owing to the influx of North Indian immigrants and convicts during the East India Company period [1, p. 74].

Ancient Maritime Connections and the Periplus

The identification of ancient Indian Ocean ports with archaeological sites on the Indian coast represents a distinct strand of scholarship in the Society’s literature. R. Braddell’s 1951 note addresses the long-standing question of whether the Greek toponym Oc-èo, named in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, corresponds to Arikamedu, a site on the Coromandel Coast of India known from excavations that revealed evidence of Roman trade contacts [2, pp. 154–157]. Braddell’s contribution is a focused intervention in the debate on ancient Indian Ocean port identifications, drawing on both the textual evidence of the Periplus and the archaeological record at Arikamedu [2, p. 154]. As a four-page note, it is consistent with the format of short communications in the JMBRAS of this period and does not constitute a comprehensive study of the subject [2, p. 157]. The note nonetheless underscores the depth of maritime exchange between the Indian subcontinent and the wider Indian Ocean world, a world in which the Malay Peninsula occupied a strategic position as a node of trans-oceanic commerce.

Wartime Internment in British India

The relationship between the Malay world and India took on a new and often painful dimension during the Second World War, when British authorities interned large numbers of Japanese and other subjects in camps across the Indian subcontinent. C. de Matos’s 2020 article reconstructs the wartime experience of three Chinese women—Chu Poh Guet, Tong Guet Kim, and Sim Yoke—who were arrested in Singapore on 11 December 1941, three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, while working as domestic servants in the Japanese Consulate [3, pp. 27–28]. Mistaken for Japanese at the moment of arrest, they were transferred through Saint John’s Island to the Purana Qila internment camp in New Delhi, then to Deoli in Rajasthan, where they remained until their release in late 1944 [3, pp. 27–28].

The conditions of internment were severe. At Purana Qila, 106 internees died by the end of 1942, primarily from dysentery, diarrhoea, and beri-beri; the women reported suffering from malaria and being “in very weak conditions” by July 1942 [3, pp. 29–30]. The 2,101 remaining civilian internees from Southeast Asia and Japan were transferred from Purana Qila to Deoli in April 1943—fifteen months after their arrival in New Delhi and twelve months after being promised better accommodation [3, p. 32]. The women were formally released in November 1944 and arrived in New Delhi on 3 December 1944; their surrendered Singaporean dollars were returned in rupees on 3 May 1945 [3, pp. 35–36].

De Matos uses the women’s case to examine the intersection of colonialism, migration, identity, and civilian internment, arguing that their story exposes the “gendered, classed and racial architectures” underpinning wartime detention practices in the British Empire [3, p. 24]. The women, migrants from Fujian province who had likely arrived in Singapore in the 1930s, strategically deployed their hybrid identities—emphasising Chinese nationality to British and Chinese authorities while appealing to Singaporean connections with the Japanese Consul-General—to navigate a system that had no clear category for them [3, pp. 30–35]. De Matos frames this as a form of “strategic identity switching,” drawing on Siew-Min Sai’s work on contested citizenship in colonial Singapore [3, pp. 38–39]. British Indian authorities ultimately reclassified the women from “internees” to “evacuees” in postwar repatriation discussions, a terminological shift that implicitly acknowledged the internment had been in violation of the 1939 Foreigners Order [3, pp. 36–37].

The article also situates the women’s story within broader patterns of Chinese female migration to Southeast Asia, noting that the 1928 Immigration Restriction Ordinance and 1933 Aliens Ordinance in Singapore shifted migration demographics toward women, who increasingly took on roles as overseas providers and domestic workers [3, pp. 25–26]. De Matos contends that the women’s experience is representative of a much larger population of pre-war migrants whose lives were disrupted by colonial competition and racialised warfare [3, p. 40].

The Indian Community in the Straits and Beyond

The colonial administrative record, as reflected in the Society’s literature, reveals that the Indian community in the Straits Settlements was not a monolithic entity but a composite of successive waves of migration. O’Sullivan’s account of the Jawi Pekan community, in which the Bengali element is as strong as the Tamil owing to the influx of North Indian immigrants and convicts during the East India Company period, illustrates the layered composition of this population [1, p. 74]. The article reflects the contemporary British administrative interest in understanding the historical roots of the Indian commercial community in the Straits, particularly as it related to the governance of the mixed Jawi Pekan population [1, p. 74].

The presence of Indian subjects in the Malay world also intersected with broader imperial administrative structures. The internment of civilians in British India during the Second World War, as documented by de Matos, demonstrates how the colonial connection between the Straits and India could be turned to the detriment of individuals caught between competing imperial loyalties and bureaucratic categories [3, pp. 24]. The archival basis for this work—the National Archives at Kew (particularly the FO 916 series files on the welfare of Japanese internees in India) and the National Archives of India (specifically the External Affairs Department proceedings on Chinese internees)—underscores the trans-imperial nature of the records that document these experiences [3, p. 24].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on India and the Malay world reveals a clear evolution in scholarly priorities across more than a century. The earliest substantial treatment, O’Sullivan’s 1901 article, is fundamentally a linguistic-archaeological argument, using the etymology of Malay vocabulary to trace the direction, timing, and nature of foreign cultural contact [1, pp. 67–74]. It draws on Marsden’s Asiatic Researches, Maxwell’s Malay Manual, Crawfurd’s work, and Snouck-Hurgronje’s writings on Aceh as its principal secondary sources, and no original archival research is undertaken [1, p. 74]. The article reflects the contemporary British administrative interest in understanding the historical roots of the Indian commercial community in the Straits [1, p. 74].

By the mid-twentieth century, the focus had shifted toward the identification of ancient maritime connections. Braddell’s 1951 note on Arikamedu and Oc-èo represents a more narrowly focused intervention in the debate on ancient Indian Ocean port identifications, drawing on both textual and archaeological evidence [2, pp. 154–157]. The format—a short communication rather than a comprehensive study—is consistent with the conventions of the JMBRAS of this period [2, p. 157].

The most recent contribution, de Matos’s 2020 article, marks a significant shift in both methodology and subject matter. Where earlier work focused on civilisational transmission and commercial networks, de Matos centres the experiences of individual migrants caught in the machinery of wartime internment, drawing on primary archival materials from both the National Archives at Kew and the National Archives of India [3, pp. 24]. The article contributes to the historiography of civilian internment in British India by centring the experiences of non-Japanese internees who were mistakenly detained, and to the literature on Chinese female migration to Southeast Asia by providing a case study of women whose diasporic identities were both a resource and a source of confusion within wartime bureaucratic systems [3, p. 40]. Together, these works trace a trajectory from broad civilisational narratives to the granular documentation of individual lives, reflecting both the maturation of the field and the expanding range of archival sources available to scholars.

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. A.W. O’Sullivan (1901). The relations between Southern India and the Straits Settlements JSBRAS 36: 67–74.
  2. R. Braddell (1951). Arikamedu and Oc-eo JMBRAS 24(3): 154–157. Read on JSTOR
  3. C. de Matos (2020). Three domestic workers, two internment camps and a war: a journey from Singapore to British India JMBRAS 93(1): 23–42.