Shiva's other children

by David J. Mearns

This pioneering study seeks to fill the gap in our knowledge concerning urban overseas populations in Asia who identify themselves as coming from the Indian subcontinent. Focusing on the people labelled Indian who have settled in the town of Melaka in Malaysia, Dr Mearns uses the anthropological ethnographic approach to examine theoretical issues in the study of urban processes and religious practice in a migrant community. He locates his discussion of the social, cultural and linguistic diversity of Malaysians of Indian origin in the context of the perceived need, in an ethnically plural polity such as Malaysia, to create a basis for collective identity and action. Dr Mearns goes on to examine the complex nature of the Indian population's forms of social organisation and the practice of their major religion as part of a broader inquiry into the role of symbolic action in the formation of ethnic and social identities. Rather than presenting a picture of ethnic solidarity in a minority