Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Aljunied, Syed Muhd Khairudin

Titel

Micro-history and the study of minorities: working-class Sikhs in Singapore and Malaya

Ist Teil von

• Social history (London), 2011-02, Vol.36 (1), p.22-35

Ort / Verlag

Abingdon: Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2011

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This article provides a narrative analysis of a widely publicized murder case in Singapore in 1929 and, in so doing, develops the argument for the need to recover uncharted aspects of the social history of working-class Sikhs in Malaya through the methodology of micro-history and the employment of previously neglected sources, such as legal records and coroners' records. The circumstances which led to the brutal murder of Jewa Singh, as will be shown, reflect the extent of personal animosities, everyday rivalry and occasional acts of violence among the Sikhs in Singapore and Malaya at that time. Additionally, by unravelling the occupational pursuits, the state and position of women, the domestic environment, modes of communication as well as networks of social acquaintances of multiple actors that were implicated in the murder, and by framing the homicide case against larger historical processes in colonial Malaya, I will demonstrate the ways in which such a fateful episode provides us with a prism for understanding the social worlds and daily life of a segment of the minority population, and the tribulations they faced as migrants in a multicultural setting.