Malaysian Indians facing major social problem: minister

South Asia News

Malaysian Indians facing major social problem: minister

Kuala Lumpur, July 8 (IANS) The Indian community in Malaysia is faced with a major social problem, according to the country's works minister and Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) president S. Samy Vellu.

His comments came after reports of suicides by ethnic Indians in recent days in different parts of the country. Indians comprise about seven percent of Malaysia's total population of around 24 million.

According to reports, Vellu called for the setting up by the government of a unit to look into the social problems faced by families and provide counselling to those in need.

'If this is done, I believe the incidence of suicides could be reduced in the future,' a report in the Malaysia Star newspaper quoted him as saying.

On Tuesday, a 30-year-old Indian origin woman, M. Sangitta, took her two daughters - Anthonyama, six, and Esther, three - and son, Jason Kalidas, to a railway track near Seremban, capital of the country's Negri Sambilan state, to commit suicide.

While the woman and her two daughters were killed after being run over by a fast moving train, five-year-old Jason escaped with injuries after being flung off the track.

The woman had reportedly been having heated arguments with her husband in recent times and the situation had worsened after he lost his job.

Earlier, last week, an 11-year-old Indian origin girl committed suicide at Sungai Sipur in the state of Perak. Her act came a year after her elder brother had committed suicide.

Expressing sadness over the deaths, Vellu said it was difficult to prevent suicides even if there were laws enacted against it.

'If a person decides to commit suicide, no one can stop him or her. We must find social ways to overcome this,' the Star report quoted him as saying.

He, however, disagreed with the statement of G. Palanivel, MIC's deputy president and country's deputy minister for women, family and community development, that suicide scenes in Indian films are also a reason behind these suicides.

Following the deaths of Sangitta and her two daughters, Palanivel had called for censorship of suicide scenes in Indian films.

This, however, is not a recent trend. Two years ago, another leading ethnic Indian politician G. Vimalah Nair had also blamed Indian films for suicides and other social problems like alcoholism afflicting the Indian community in this Southeast Asian nation.

In a BBC report, she had said that many Malaysians of Indian origin are trapped in poverty and face family break-ups. For these people, movies are not just a main source of entertainment; they are a means of escape from lives often constrained by poverty and marred by violence.

Vimalah had said that Bollywood films leave many impressionable young people with unattainable dreams.

In 2002 a report in Time magazine had described how decades of official discrimination had turned Malaysia's ethnic Indians into a disgruntled underclass.

According to the Time article, affirmative action-type quotas for the Malay population, along with a political system controlled by the Malays and Chinese, make many Indian Malaysians feel like third-class citizens.

The result is an increasingly aggrieved population, and a timid one, that isn't very happy about its place in society, the report said.

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Malaysian Indians facing major social problem: minister