Origins of the Indian community

Origins of the Indian community

Veeramalla Anjaiah, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta/Medan, North Sumatra

Selvam, 35, of Indian descent, said he did not know how his
family came to Indonesia from India.

"When I was a child, my grandfather used to tell us his father
came from a place called Dharmapuri in Tamil Nadu. None of my
family members have any knowledge of where this 'Dharmapuri' is.
We don't have the money to go to India to trace our origins,
Selvam, who works as a construction laborer in the North Sumatran
capital of Medan, told The Jakarta Post recently.

Selvam's great grandfather was one of the thousands of Indian
victims of the British colonial regime in the 19th century.

The British sent hundreds of thousands of illiterate villagers
to countries like Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia, Fiji and
Suriname as indentured laborers to work on its tea, sugar and
rubber plantations.

Those laborers were the earliest members of the Indian
diaspora, which today spans the globe.

Though Indians are not known as a mobile people like the Jews
and the Chinese, the Indian diaspora is made up of more than 25
million people across the globe.

The Indian diaspora consists of Indian citizens, as well as
expatriates of Indian origin.

Indonesia and India are maritime neighbors and have inherited
a rich cultural heritage with so many things in common. The
island of Java, the most populous island in Indonesia, was
mentioned in the great Indian epic, Ramayana, under the name of
Yavadwipa (barley island). It was one of the places where search
parties were sent out for Sita (the wife of Rama), and it was by
this name that the island was known to Ptolemy, the acclaimed
geographer of the second century A.D.

According to various history books, early Indian migration,
largely stemmed from religious and trade missions to Indonesia.
Thanks to these missions, several Hindu kingdoms emerged on Java
and Buddhist (Mahayana) kingdoms on Sumatra, during the early and
medieval periods of history respectively.

In modern times, the indentured laborers -- who mainly came
from India's Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh provinces, were the
first members of the present Indian community here. Later, the
British government also brought another group of Indians to
Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries. They were mostly
soldiers or employees of British plantation companies.

After World War II, the Indian laborers, soldiers and
employees decided to stay on -- many of them in fact staying for
generations.

Though a large number of the present generation of ethnic
Tamils in Indonesia and other countries in the region are not
wealthy, due to their lack of proper education, others -- like
Texmaco group owner Marimutu Sinivasan and Malaysia's billionaire
Ananda Krishnan -- a telecommunications tycoon who built the 88-
story Petronas Twin Towers -- have demonstrated their expertise
in business.

Then, another wave of Indian migrants -- small-scale traders,
professionals and laborers -- ventured into Southeast Asia during
the early part of the 20th century to test their luck.

Gujarati and Bombay traders -- mostly Sindhis, Parsis and
Marathis, Sikhs and Tamils belonged to this wave of migrants.
They arrived in Indonesia independently -- some with nothing but
the clothes on their backs -- to establish textiles, iron and
steel, shoes, sports equipment and other businesses in major
cities, including Medan, Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung, Solo,
Padang, Banda Aceh and Semarang.

Lakshmi Mittal, the world's number one steel tycoon who came
to Indonesia empty-handed in the 1970s, and the TV entertainment
mogul Ram Punjab are some of the success stories from this group
of migrants.

Later professionals and the educated elite of India arrived
here seeking financial gains, particularly between 1990 and 1997
when the economy was booming.

This Indian expatriate group is made up of managers,
accountants, entrepreneurs, teachers, information technology
experts, bankers, traders, researchers, inventors, engineers and
analysts, who are working in various companies and organizations
across Indonesia.

Besides advancing their own careers, members of the Indian
community -- both Indonesian citizens and Indian expatriates --
have made significant contributions to their host country in many
fields.

Some established schools of repute such as Gandhi
International School in Jakarta and Rama International School in
Purwakarta, West Java, thus contributing to the development of
education in the country.

Curiously, there is no official data on the strength of the
Indian community here. Although, in the year 2000, the Indian
government announced that there were 55,000 people of Indian
origin living in Indonesia.

According to an estimate in the early 1990s, there were about
300,000 people of Indian descent living in North Sumatra alone,
where the famous Kampung Keling (India town) is located. Many of
them have already left North Sumatra and migrated to Malaysia,
Singapore and the Middle East. Some of them moved to Jakarta and
other towns.

"There are only a few Indians living now in Kampung Keling,"
Rajan, who works as a parking attendant in Medan, said.

In Jakarta also, many ethnic Indians have moved to other areas
from Pasar Baru, where they were traditionally located. Perhaps
the reason may be that both Kampung Keling and Pasar Baru are
located in prime areas. Now that the land value has increased
manifold, they have been selling their homes at a higher price
and moving to areas on the outskirts of the cities.

The fast-growing Indian expatriate community was badly
affected by the 1997 financial crisis. Several hundred Indian
expatriates lost their jobs and either went back to India or
moved to other countries.

However, the successes of the Indian community in Indonesia
can be attributed to its traditional ethos, its tolerance and
hospitality, its educational aptitude and qualifications, and its
capacity to harmonize and adapt.

For example, the Indian community has been living in harmony
in the word's largest Muslim nation, Indonesia, as well as
several other Islamic countries in the Middle East for several
decades. It has also been a welcome addition to the U.S. and
several European nations.