The essays in Spirited Politics throw light on predicaments that spring from the intersection of religion, ethnicity, and nationalism in contemporary Southeast Asian public life. Covering material from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines, the contributors explore the calamities and ironies of Southeast Asian identity politics, examining the ways in which religion and politics are made to serve each other.
The essays in Spirited Politics throw light on predicaments that spring from the intersection of religion, ethnicity, and nationalism in contemporary Southeast Asian public life. Covering material from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines, the contributors explore the calamities and ironies of Southeast Asian identity politics, examining the ways in which religion and politics are made to serve each other.
This paper traces senses of injustice among Indian Malaysians which found expression in the 'illegal' Hindraf rally in Kuala Lumpur in 2007. While underlying ethnic and racial differentiation has been rendered through law in the post-colonial nation-state, the focus here is on a specific locality: resettlement flats for Indians displaced for the construction of Malaysia's federal government administrative centre, Putrajaya. Ex-plantation workers are shown to be symbolically peripheral (to the spectacular 'national landscape' of Putrajaya) and to have experienced everyday forms of ethnicised marginalisation. The rally in the commercial heart of Kuala Lumpur—involving tens of thousands of Indian Malaysians from across peninsular Malaysia—mobilised what were previously largely localised grievances such as those associated with the Putrajaya estate evictions. It is shown how this ethnic transgression not only contests the 'second-class' position of Indians in Malaysia, but may also contribute to a redrawing of the ethnic contours of Malaysia's legal and political landscape. More broadly, the Hindraf events also serve as a reminder that rights and social justice claims expressed in key urban centres continue to have important national-scale dimensions, even in an ostensibly neo-liberalised global economy.
