ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 picks up the analysis from the 1957 Independence of Malaya, emphasising the political, legal, social and economic changes that were sweeping through the state. The post-colonial years show the reinforcement of politico-legal Indian identity constructed by colonial race classifications through the creation of grievances from race-based partisan politics and race-based entitlements that excluded non-Malay groups. The time frame from 1957 to 1989 exemplifies a period of gestation in terms of Indian grievances, which have been linked to both formal law and soft law (in particular the affirmative action policy that came with the 1970 New Economic Policy, NEP). Two key arguments are made in this chapter: first, the acquiescence of Indians during this period of intensification of socioeconomic grievances is linked to the socioeconomic class cleavages which derailed any collective efforts by Indians; second, although there were early occurrences of cross-class religious grievances such as the series of Hindu temple demolitions and the legal case that proceeded the Kerling temple incident, there was no mass mobilisation. The chapter ends with an account of the accumulation of rising ethno-class grievances, which sets the stage for the 1990s mobilisation.
