ABSTRACT
Practices of public exclusion, segregation and discrimination against untouchables were established in Singapore sometime between the 1870s and the turn of the century. This chapter examines some of these practices in greater detail, using a range of sources to explore the everyday lives of untouchable Tamil migrants and their relations with other Tamil Hindu migrants. I argue that transnational social structures and kinship links served as mechanisms of control that governed and sustained inter-caste relations. This chapter will also include an analysis of the ways in which social conditions in Singapore problematised the practice of untouchability and of how caste Hindus resisted challenges posed to caste practice by an ethnically plural environment.
