Malaysian Indians or Indo-Malaysian are Malaysian citizens of Indian or South Asian ancestry. They now form the third-largest group in Malaysia, after the Malays and the Chinese. Most are descendants of those who migrated from India to British Malaya from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries. Most Malaysian Indians are ethnic Tamils; smaller groups include the Malayalees, Telugus and Punjabis. Malaysian Indians form the fifth-largest community of Overseas Indians in the world. In Malaysia, they represent the third-largest group, constituting 7% of the Malaysian population, after the ethnic Malays and the Chinese. They are usually referred to simply as "Indians" in English, Orang India in Malay, "Yin du ren" in Chinese.
Malaysian Indians
Candi Bukit Batu Pahat of Bujang Valley. A Hindu-Buddhist kingdom ruled ancient Kedah possibly as early as 110 A.D, the earliest evidence of strong Indian influence which was once prevalent among the pre-Islamic Kedahan Malays.
SS Rajula, operating her fortnightly "Straits Service" between Madras to Penang, Port Klang and Singapore from 1926 to 1972. The vessel transported many Indian migrants between South India to then-British Malaya as well as independent Malaysia.
Thaipusam Celebration in Balik Pulau, Penang. 1937
Tamil Malaysians, also known as Malaysian Tamilar, are people of full or partial Tamil descent who were born in or immigrated to Malaysia from Tamil Nadu, India and the Tamil regions of north-east Sri Lanka. The majority of 1.8–2 million people 80% of the Malaysian Indian populations in Malaysia were from Indian Tamil ethnic groups from Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. The bulk of Tamil Malaysian migration began during the British Raj, when Britain facilitated the migration of Indian workers to work in plantations. There are, however, some established Tamil communities from before British colonialism.
A group of Tamil people in British Malaya, 1898.
Malaysian Tamils during the construction of Death railway between June 1942 to October 1943.
Tamil woman in the Malay Peninsula, circa 1910.
A Tamil girl in the Malay Peninsula, circa 1910.