Today was a blessed experience to travel to Hulu Selangor to the plantations which host the oldest plantation communities of Mary Estate which are totally off the main road and is home to the plantation histories of the Indian community in Malaysia. The area off the north south highway is a different country.
The spatial marginalisation of the Indian community was evident with its low key public infrastructure including a Tamil school. The area is not accessible by public transportation. The area is next door to the temple and a river which has seen a depletion in fish in the recent years. The air has a tinge of odour, being nearby a landfill in Bukit Tagar. The homes in the area are run down yet have a beauty about them. The demographic is elderly, as if it’s a retirement home. The young have no work as do the migrant workers. The young have to work in the plantations nearby to make do following in the footsteps of the ancestors.
Each home has a few motorcycles, as there is no public transportation. The community is deeply political with a PKR poster at the start of the settlement. The Socialists in PSM with their estate background have sympathetic supporters as well. Their mobilisation with the estate workers is well known. The area has been gerrymandered in the recent years from Kuala Selangor to Hulu Selangor. Residents hardly get to see their representatives fifty kilometres away in the district office. The place once at the heart of plantation capitalism has fallen off the map only to be popular with researchers and non profits scavenging off the detritus of pathos of the plantation workers.
The disconnect with the state is due to the low density and the remote location. The plantation estate community seeks the fruits of Malaysian modernity only sixty kilometres away in bustling KL. The post colony’s burdens of the empire are still weighing the plantation community’s present and the future.
Change Thinker 