Songs of Tamil plantation women of Malaya: Contesting memories and histories
By: Saxena, Vandana and Saigaran, Nithiya Guna
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Material type: 
BookPublisher: Modern Asian Studies Description: 59(1), Jan, 2025: p.265-288.Subject(s): Tamil plantation women, Malaysian plantation, Malaysian Indians, Plantation songs, Counter memory
In:
Modern Asian StudiesSummary: This article is an outcome of a search for the Tamil plantation woman in Malaysia and her voice—her stories and memories, in her own words. Through the plantation songs of Tamil workers in Malaysia, first collated and published in the 1980s, we explore the experiences and memories of these women, singing about their lives and work in the Malayan plantations. As memory-work, these songs constitute an oral history that provides an uneasy counter to hegemonic discourses like that of the colonial planters who employed the women, or the nationalist historiography of India and Malaysia where they are sidelined and reduced to figures of abject victimhood in the clutches of colonial capitalism, or the post-colonial discourse where their memories and experiences constitute a shameful past that obstructs optimism for the future. Tamil plantation songs call for a comparative approach to history and memory—between the position of the woman and that of the man, or the labourer and the supervisor/planter, as well as more problematic and shifting positionalities like seducer and the seduced, or the victim and the perpetrator.- Reproduced
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-asian-studies/article/abs/songs-of-tamil-plantation-women-of-malaya-contesting-memories-and-histories/4011258C2D27E3968ACD75EBEC9C1A0D
| Item type | Current location | Call number | Vol info | Status | Date due | Barcode |
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Articles
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Indian Institute of Public Administration | 59(1), Jan, 2025: p.265-288 | Available | AR137283 |
This article is an outcome of a search for the Tamil plantation woman in Malaysia and her voice—her stories and memories, in her own words. Through the plantation songs of Tamil workers in Malaysia, first collated and published in the 1980s, we explore the experiences and memories of these women, singing about their lives and work in the Malayan plantations. As memory-work, these songs constitute an oral history that provides an uneasy counter to hegemonic discourses like that of the colonial planters who employed the women, or the nationalist historiography of India and Malaysia where they are sidelined and reduced to figures of abject victimhood in the clutches of colonial capitalism, or the post-colonial discourse where their memories and experiences constitute a shameful past that obstructs optimism for the future. Tamil plantation songs call for a comparative approach to history and memory—between the position of the woman and that of the man, or the labourer and the supervisor/planter, as well as more problematic and shifting positionalities like seducer and the seduced, or the victim and the perpetrator.- Reproduced
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-asian-studies/article/abs/songs-of-tamil-plantation-women-of-malaya-contesting-memories-and-histories/4011258C2D27E3968ACD75EBEC9C1A0D
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