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.
The Tamil people, also known as Tamilar, Tamilians, or simply Tamils, are a Dravidian ethnolinguistic group who natively speak the Tamil language and trace their ancestry mainly to India's southern state of Tamil Nadu, to the union territory of Puducherry, and to Sri Lanka. The Tamil language is one of the world's longest-surviving classical languages, with over 2000 years of Tamil literature, including the Sangam poems, which were composed between 300 BCE and 300 CE. People who speak Tamil as their mother tongue and are born in Tamil clans are considered Tamils.
Tamil bride and groom performing the ritual of metti anidal
Grey pottery with engravings, Arikamedu, 1st century CE
Megalithic sarcophagus burial from Tamil Nadu
Virampatnam jewelry from funerary burial, 2nd century BCE, Tamil Nadu
