5 - Deep within the eye of the beheld: exploring hidden accounts of intimacy in the lives of older Indian women in urban Malaysia

Summary

Studying the Indian community in Malaysia is a contested field. Although this chapter focuses specifically on gendered accounts of intimacy, the personal is situated against a backdrop of deep- seated social and economic vulnerability among the Indian minority community in Malaysia. This community battles between maintaining their culture and (not) having ownership of the landscape they belong to.

The central idea in this chapter is to explore and understand the taboo discourse on sex and intimacy among older Indian women in urban Malaysia. These women are the first or second generation of Indians born in the host country, to diasporic parents from India. However, several discourses need to be examined before the positioning of these women's socio- subject identity can be revisited and identified with more honesty. Only after the social, cultural and historical contexts have been established, would the examination of the women's complex, multi- layered narratives make better sense. It is necessary to study the voices of the younger generation, which capture the voices of the older generation, so the latter can be recorded. This dialogic challenge includes making audible and knowable the unspoken issues of intergenerational silences.

The inter- ethnic diasporic past

Indians as a migrant population left India and arrived in Malaysia (then called Malaya) in the 1800s, when the colonial East India Company decided to increase its revenue by trading with Malaya (Sandhu, 2006). Although the blanket term ‘Indian’ is used in this research, it must be mentioned that these Indians have historical roots in ‘North’ India (as Sikhs, Hindustanis, Sindhis, Gujeratis, Bengalis), or in ‘South’ India (as Tamils, Telugus, Malayalees, Chettiars and even Sri Lankan Tamils). The usage of the generic ‘Indian’ is convenient and is evidenced in all national narratives that seek to represent a united front for multiracial Malaysia (Sandhu, 2006; Manickam, 2010).

Although the majority of Indians were brought in to work on rubber plantations, ‘substantial numbers of English- educated Indians’ also began to arrive, as those who benefitted from the colonial education policy (Sandhu, 2006: 154). The two separate sets of arrivals eventually created a class divide among the Indians, where the educated ones became the middle class, and where the manual labourers remained working class.