When asked about my race, I usually jokingly respond with “I’m a fake Indian” at first. I then explain that the legal race on my IC is Indian, but I don’t speak any Indian languages or know anything about Indian cultures, and that I have Malay roots in addition to my Indian heritage.
My Indian heritage comes from my great grandfather, whom I often refer to as “the original Indian”. He is what some Malays would call “India mari”: a person who came from India and stayed in Singapore. He married a Bugis woman and had my grandfather as well as my grandfather’s many siblings, some of whom reside in India and have families there, from what I’ve been told. In turn, my grandfather married my Pakistani-Bawean grandmother, and they had my father and his siblings. Since all the patriarchs in the family are Indian, my race is automatically registered as Indian as well.
I have Indian features too. My skin is dark, my eyes are big and round, and my eyebrows are as thick as the rest of my body hair. These are features I love about myself, but people often use them against me. They say I have an “angry” and “unapproachable” demeanour, a loud voice and a bad temper—traits people associate with being Indian. Are these microaggressions or just straight-up racist?
My physical features are probably why the people around me perceive me as an Indian. When I used to work at the mosque, my clients would ask, “Mana budak India hitam manis tu?”, which roughly translates to “Where’s that sweet dark Indian girl?” I’ve had so many people come up to me on the streets speaking Tamil and I have to embarrassingly admit that I don’t speak the language. “You aren’t Indian?” they’d ask. “I am, I just don’t know how to speak Tamil…” I’d respond, much to both our disappointments.
Growing up, I received my education at a full-time Islamic institution that was primarily made up of Malays, and I was definitely not spared from racist encounters. When I was 10, I had to wear slippers to school with my baju kurung uniform because I had a toenail injury. My principal called me out and said something along the lines of “Jangan pakai selipar macam gini. Nampak macam anak keling.” (“Don’t wear slippers like these. It makes you look like an Indian child.”) I didn’t know what to tell her. I’ve always felt proud of being Indian and Malay, but in that moment, I felt that I shouldn’t tell her because she sounded so condescending, like being Indian was a bad thing, and I didn’t want to be treated as less than others.
But even though other people see me as Indian, I often struggle to identify myself as an Indian person. This isn’t because I’m ashamed—I really want to proudly call myself Indian—but I don’t feel like I deserve to do so. I’m an Indian-Malay Muslim who grew up in the Malay community, socialises with Malay people, speaks Malay, wears traditional Malay clothing and partakes in Malay cultural practices. Of course, over time, multiple elements of Malay and Indian cultures have mixed in Singapore, especially for Muslims. However, for the most part, I’m more in touch with my Malay roots than I am with my South Asian ones, which makes me feel like a ‘bad’ or ‘fake’ Indian.
Growing up relatively Malay-passing in the Muslim community comes with privileges, and as a result of my ‘Malayness’, I’ve always felt scared of calling myself an Indian Muslim. For example, code-switching is something I’ve seen some of my extended family members do. “We are not lazy like the Malays, we are Indians! Indians are very hardworking and smart,” I’d hear them boast. Other times, it suddenly becomes “We don’t beat our wives like the Indians,” or “We are Malay/Muslim! How come Mendaki doesn’t want to help us?”
I know I can be both Malay and Indian—that’s what I am. That’s what many people are in Singapore. But I don’t want to identify as Indian only when it’s convenient or when people shame me for being Malay, and I don’t want to be Malay because I’ve been made to feel ashamed about being Indian. I’m afraid of trivialising or minimising the Indian culture and experience. I want to proudly say I’m Indian but, at the same time, I don’t know if I deserve to do that.
I often ask myself: “What does it mean to be Indian? What are your lived experiences as an Indian Muslim woman living in Singapore?” The answers that come to mind are the racist encounters and the inability to respond to people who speak to me in Tamil. It’s also the anger that I feel when Malay people appropriate Indian culture to look exotic, sell products or paint this superficial idea of acceptance and multiculturalism, while enabling racism against Indian people in their everyday lives.
Why is my Indian heritage measured by such negative things and narrow standards? Surely there is more to being Indian than physical features, monthly SINDA deductions and calling my uncles and aunties “Mami” or “Mamu”. I want my Indian heritage to manifest in more meaningful ways. I find my identity flip-flopping more often than not. So I spoke to my friends and family about it, including fellow Indian-Malay Muslim women.
As it turns out, I’m not alone in feeling this way—my cousins and sisters feel it as well. We don’t want to grasp at straws to justify the 1/8th of us that’s Indian. But, as one of my dear friends reminded me, no one gets to tell me how to be Indian. I am not disconnected from my Indian heritage because I want to be—it’s the result of many social and environmental factors. It is not my fault that I’ve lost touch with my Indian roots, because assimilation and marrying into Malay families and communities is part of the Indian Muslim experience that my ancestors had to go through to survive in Singapore.
In Beyoncé’s “Brown Skin Girl”, she sings: “Your skin is not only dark, it shines and it tells your story.” My biological features are not the only things that make me Indian, yet my dark skin is an indicator of the Indian blood that runs through me, and of my ancestors’ stories. My father would chart our family tree across his whiteboard and tell us stories of his Indian grandfather, Shaik Kadir Mastan. He worked a noble job on the seas to send pilgrims from India to Makkah for Hajj and Umrah before settling down in Singapore with the daughter of the penghulu kampung (Malay village chief).
I am Indian. I am Malay. I am proudly both, or at least I want to be. I think it’s going to take quite a bit of time before I can feel like I deserve to call myself an Indian and make sense of my identity. I’ve been planning to learn conversational Tamil, and possibly Hindi or Malayalam, so I can serve both Malay and Indian communities in social services. There’s a large gap in services being rendered to minority groups in Singapore, and I want to do my best to help my community.
I know that there are many other mixed-race people who feel the way I do about our identities, because we no longer fit into rigid definitions of CMIO. In the meantime, when confused people ask me questions about my race and ethnicity, I’ll gladly give them the lengthy explanation.
Afifah is a Indian-Malay Muslim woman living in Singapore. She is a social worker who is passionate about social justice and holding up safe spaces to discuss anything and everything, for anyone and everyone.
