This book analyses the mobilisation of race, rights and the law in Malaysia. It examines the Indian community in Malaysia, a quiet minority which consists of the former Indian Tamil plantation labour community and the urban Indian middle-class. The first part of the book explores the role played by British colonial laws and policies during the British colonial period in Malaya, from the 1890s to 1956, in the construction of an Indian "race" in Malaya, the racialization of labour laws and policies and labour-based mobilisation culminated in the 1940s. The second part investigates the mobilisation trends of the Indian community from 1957 (at the onset of Independent Malaya) to 2018. It shows a gradual shift in the Indian community from a "quiet minority" into a mass mobilising collective or social movement, known as the Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF), in 2007. The author shows that activist lawyers and Indian mobilisers played a crucial part in organizing a civil disobedience strategy of framing grievances as political rights and using the law as a site of contention in order to claim legal rights through strategic litigation. Highly interdisciplinary in nature, this book will be of interest to scholars and researchers examining the role of the law and rights in areas such as sociolegal studies, law and society scholarship, law and the postcolonial, social movement studies, migration and labour studies, Asian law and Southeast Asian Studies.

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2010 in the subject Law - Public Law / Constitutional Law / Basic Rights, grade: A, The University of Western Australia, language: English, abstract: The Modern Malaysia is one of the pluralistic societies that comprise of communities of different ethnic, cultural and religious perspectives. The prevailing state of affairs is as a result of the British colonial social experiments. They happened between the 18th and 20th century during which a large number of the Chinese and Indian laborers were imported to the British Malaya. This is to enable the contribution of the labor force in the various plantations and mines. Prior to the British colonization in Malaysia, the population constituted of majorly the Malays, non-Malay natives and the Orang Asli as the aboriginal people. This is with Malays being the population constituting of the majority. However, as a result of the British colonists importation of foreigners as laborers in massive numbers Malaya, the population was fundamentally altered. Following the importation of the foreign laborers in larger numbers to Malaysia during the colonization, the population of the Malaysian community underwent an alteration that saw the Chinese formation of one-third the population and the Indians forming one tenth of the total population. Malaysia is known presently as one of the multi-ethnic and multi-religious societies with an underlying objective dictated through the provisions of the article 153 of the constitution. Malaysia is one of the global most recognized countries with a multi-religious and multi-ethnic perspective with provisions supporting racism written in the constitution. The Malaysian population constitutes of the Malays as the majority making up to 50.4% of the total population, Indian 7.1%, the Chinese with 23.7%, and the indigenous population up to 11%.

This publication brings together the work of several writers in documenting and understanding the consequences of state-formation on ethnicity in Malaysia and Singapore, thirty years after the two nations went their separate paths.

This book provides a systematic and interdisciplinary examination of law and legal institutions in Malaysia. It examines legal issues from historical, social, and political perspectives, and discusses the role of law in relation to Malaysian multiculturalism, religion, politics, and society. It shows how the Malaysian legal system is at the heart of debates about how to deal with the country's problems, which include ethnic and religious divisions, uneven and unsustainable development, and political authoritarianism; and it argues that the Malaysian legal system has much to teach other plural polities, nations within the common law tradition, and federal states.

Set in Malaysia, this book encompasses language and cultural policy challenges that many other multi-ethnic nations currently have to address. The people of Malaysia constitute a diverse ethnic, linguistic and cultural population and one of the continuing challenges is the development and establishment of the Malaysian people’s ethnic, national and global cultural identities. This challenge is evident in the journey of language and cultural policy from the post-independence period to the 21st century; a period of over 50 years. The book highlights political, socio-cultural, economic and knowledge economy factors as they impact on decisions made by the government with regard to language policy in the various educational systems. It examines decisions made on the selection of the national language, the medium of instruction in educational systems, the varying changes in language policy for the field of science and technology and the maintenance and sustenance of minority languages.