7 - The Making of a Diasporic Space: Social and Political Dimensions

Summary

Bengali migrants became distinctly visible in the Malay public space in the late nineteenth century. Their professional world has been discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, showing that they gradually created a diasporic space with other migrant communities, such as the Chinese and Tamils. When it comes to social spaces, the Bengalis carved them out in several ways: by maintaining intergenerational communication, fostering multiculturalism, continuing interaction with other diasporic communities and forming transnational families in Malaya. These multidimensional aspects of space-making made the Bengali diaspora an integral part of the Malay cosmopolitan world, a role only enhanced by the contributions to Malaya's decolonisation process after WWII. This chapter explores how the Bengalis carved out a place for themselves through interactions with other communities, political practices and involvement in making institutions of social and political importance.

Intergenerational communication

When Ramnath Biswas was travelling in Malacca, an elderly ‘Sundarban Bengkalis’ invited him to have dinner with his family. The Sundarban Bengkalis served eastern Bengal food and spoke in an unusual accent, prompting Biswas to learn more about the so-called Sundarban Bengkalis. He later had another opportunity to learn about them from a Bengali named Deepak, who spoke in the Barisal dialect and lived in a Portuguese mahalla (a residential area or unit). According to Deepak, when Buddhism declined in Bengal, many Bengali Buddhists from the Sundarbans migrated to Pulau Bengkalis. This dispersion continued during the Portuguese and Maghs plunder at the Bay of Bengal and Sundarban areas. This diffuse community was mostly composed of fishermen in Bengal. They upheld the same profession at Pulau Bengkalis. After fishing in the Straits, they brought the fish to sell in the Malacca market. Later, some settled in Malacca and converted to Christianity. Deepak said that the Bengalis who migrated from Pulau Bengkalis to Malacca were known as Sundarban Bengkalis. A few primary and secondary sources corroborate Deepak's narrative. For instance, Lloyd and Moore suggested that the Indians settled in the tiny fishing village and married local girls before the Muslim arrival. The Suma Oriental and the Report of Balthasar Bort, Dutch–Malacca Governor (1665–1677), both explain that the Bengali fishermen settled and engaged in the fishing profession in Malacca.