The Minority Report

After a long day at the office, all I wanted was to get home and relax and watch a movie... "My Fat Greek Wedding" to be precise, but one glimpse at what was going on CNN-IBN's "Face The Nation" and I knew that I simply had to write about it.

The topic under debate on the channel was the recent protests and treatment of the ethnic Indian minority. I for one am an Indian, born a Hindu and most certainly a Tamil. So it goes without saying that I have an opinion about what is going on in Malaysia. However, I will refrain from writing my two cents about the actual happenings because in order to do so, one has to collect more data than just random news clippings in order to provide a disinterested view of the situation.

What really caught my eye during the debate was the name of the organization leading the protests... The Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf).

I couldn't but notice the irony in the name. Think about it... a group of ethnic Indian Tamils (at least the majority of the ethnic Indians in Malaysia are Tamils) identify themselves as Hindus. This comes at a time when a sizable chunk of their native brethren consider themselves as being a group of distinctive non-Hindus with some going to the extent of terming Hinduism as a whole being a plot to oppress Tamils. What is even more ironic is that the rise of anti-Hinduism in Tamil Nadu over the last one century pretty much coincides chronologically with the rise of Hindu identity among ethnic Indian/Tamils in Malaysia.

This jarring contradiction of people of the same origin choosing and opposing the same idea raises questions in my mind. What is the religious identity of Tamils? More importantly, what is the religious identity of any minority group?

A closer look reveals that this is something that can be determined only in the context of the situation that makes the group a minority or to be more politically incorrect, it is the majority which determines the religious identity of the minority.

There are two ways in which the religious identity of the minority gets defined.
(i) It is seen as a way to distinguish the minority from the majority.
(ii) It serves as form of rebellion against the majority.

The religious leanings of Malaysian ethnic Tamils and the converse behavior of many Tamilians here in India serves as an example of the former. In case of the Malaysian Tamils, since the line between majority and minority has already been drawn, religion is seen as a rallying point because religion indirectly represents culture which in turn indirectly represents ethnic divide.

The same theory can be applied to Indian Tamils as well, with their non-Hindu identity seen as representing something distinctly different from the North Indians.


Strong examples of religious identity being a weapon of rebellion can be seen in the slow tilt of African-Americans towards Islam as well as the mass conversions of Dalits to Buddhism.In these cases the minority-majority have had the same religious affiliations (at least in the recent past) and hence see the move away from the majority's religion as a way of asserting themselves.

You may agree with me or you may not agree with me, but you are more than welcome to leave your comments on this post. Before you do so, please remember that this is not a rant against any religion. All I have done here is provide my own observations about sociological behavior of groups of lesser numbers in a multicultural/multi ethnic society.