Tamil Indonesian Tamil Women: A Gendered Affiliation to PostColonial Order

Tamil migration towards Asia and Africa is mostly rendered as the colonial story of male manpower.1 In this article, I offer an insight into the ascendance of diasporic Tamils in Indonesia through the life stories of women. I shall describe how Rajes, Tandil, Pongala and Nenek Batter2 whom I first met in early 1990 in Medan, North Sumatra struggled to acquire control over their lives through the appropriation of religious persona. My main argument concerns the transformation of nearly-enslaved migrants into an “ethnic community in Indonesia seen through a gendered lens. I will underline how the Tamils, for the most part belonging to a very humble or frankly poor class within the city of Medan, constructed their citizenship in a constant dynamic with their ethnicity, thus re-shaping intimate and ritual relationships.