The New Nation - Internet Edition

A FOUR trillion dollar lawsuit was filed in London against Britain for Indian Malaysians against alleged atrocities suffered by them during the colonial rule. Seeking one million pounds (two million dollars) compensation for each of the currently estimated two million Indian Malaysians, the suit was filed in early September by a Malaysian human rights lawyer Ponnusamy Waytha Moorthy. Many Indians were brought to Malaysia from southern India as indentured labour by the British, but their future generations 'were left high and dry' when the colonial power left the country, as Moorthy was quoted to have said. There have been segregation, discrimination, marginalisation and other abuses of Indian Malaysians, he alleged as reported by AFP news agency.

Ethnic Indians and Chinese are minority groups in Malaysia, whose 26 million population is predominantly Malay. The resource-rich country which won independence in 1957 from Britain, has blossomed into one of Southeast Asia's top economies. But Moorthy said 70 per cent of Indian Malaysians were poor, with many in the middle and upper classes of the community migrating overseas. The colossal suit reflects the years of pain, suffering, humiliation and discrimination that the Indian Malaysians were subjected to after they were brought in from their country of origin. The negligence and failure of the British 'in not entrenching the rights of the minority Indians in the Constitution' when they granted Malaysia independence has been mentioned. The plaintiff while filing the suit asked 'the British courts to declare the Malaysian Constitution null and void.' In this context, the Malaysian human rights lawyer talked about a bleak future for which he took this action of filing suit because they have been pushed to the wall. He stated that he had three months to serve notice of the court action on the named defendant, the British Foreign Secretary.

At least one British law firm was considering handling his case. Amnesty International's Washington-based Asia-Pacific Advocacy, in this regard, noted that the British colonial power had taken tens of thousands of Indians as labourers to various parts of the world. Among them were South Africa, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Fiji and Mauritius. And mostly taking of nationals as labourers from one colony to another was for its own economic interests to serve the purpose of the British Empire only. Alex Hailey's 'The Roots' reminds one of the tragic scenes how the British colonial masters enchained people and sent them as slaves from African colonies to America after they made the continent across the Atlantic colony for work and development in total defiance of human dignity and rights. India, a resourceful country, had been ruthlessly exploited by the colonial power during its rule of about 200 years. The Indian Sri Lankans, mostly Tamils, who were taken by the British colonial power for tea plantation in the adjacent areas of the island nation, are now engaged in conflict with the mainland people obviously with instigation from outside.