Exploring the Indian Diaspora’s Role in Southeast Asia’s Development

The Indian presence in Southeast Asia is not a modern story. It stretches back over two millennia – from ancient maritime traders to colonial-era plantation workers to today’s IT professionals shaping Singapore’s tech economy. Across countries like Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand, the Indian diaspora has left an unmistakable imprint on culture, politics, and economic life. Yet this story is not without complexity. Alongside remarkable integration and contribution, it includes chapters of displacement, statelessness, and a persistent struggle for belonging.

A diaspora shaped by centuries of movement 🔗

Southeast Asia was within the Indian sphere of cultural influence from roughly 290 BCE through the 15th century CE, during which Hindu-Buddhist ideas shaped local political systems, language, art, and religion. Tamil connections to the region can be traced back 2,000 years, with medieval Tamil inscriptions found in Sumatra and Thailand documenting trade relations and merchant associations. The Chola rulers, known for their naval power, extended their reach to Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, while Indian merchant guilds established trade networks that influenced everything from pottery to textiles.

The nature of migration shifted dramatically during colonial rule. After the 1870s, Southeast Asia witnessed a heavy influx of migrants – most of them Tamil indentured labourers brought in to serve colonial economic interests. British acquisition of Penang, Melaka, and Singapore between 1786 and 1824 initiated a steady inflow of Indian labour, including traders, policemen, plantation workers, and colonial soldiers. This was not voluntary movement in any meaningful sense. It was organised, systematic, and designed to serve empire.

Profile of the Indian diaspora in Southeast Asia today 🔗

Indians constitute roughly 8% to 9% of the total population in Malaysia and Singapore, while in Myanmar and Indonesia they account for approximately 4% and less than 0.5% respectively. The communities are far from homogeneous. In Malaysia, the majority are Tamils descended from plantation workers. In Singapore, the Indian community is multilayered – ethnically, linguistically, and economically diverse. Today, approximately 650,000 people of Indian origin live in Singapore, making up nearly 10% of the country’s population and its third-largest ethnic group. Thailand hosts a smaller community, but one that punches above its weight in business and trade.

Indians in Singapore 🔗

Tamil is one of Singapore’s four official languages alongside English, Malay, and Mandarin – a formal recognition of the community’s deep roots. The proportion of Indian professionals in Singapore nearly doubled from 13% to 26% between 2005 and 2020, reflecting a dramatic shift from earlier labour migration to high-skilled professional immigration. Indians today are prominent in banking, finance, information technology, and public life. Indian Employment Pass holders in Singapore nearly doubled between 2005 and 2021, contributing significantly to the finance and tech sectors that power Singapore’s multinational economy.

Indians in Malaysia 🔗

The Indian workforce in Malaysia was instrumental in clearing land for infrastructure, establishing rubber plantations, building roads, and setting up the country’s early railways, ports, and airports. Over time, a professional class emerged alongside the plantation workforce. Malaysian Indians today include doctors (28.4%), lawyers (26.8%), and engineers (6.4%) in the national professional workforce – yet many others remain at the economic margins. The divide between the urban professional class and rural plantation communities is one of the starkest social inequalities within any diaspora community in the region.

Indians in Thailand 🔗

The cultural and economic interaction between India and Thailand can be traced to around the 6th century BCE, with Buddhism – propagated by missionaries sent by Emperor Ashoka – becoming Thailand’s state religion. In Indonesia, Sikhs, Sindhis, and Tamils have traditionally engaged in small businesses across sports goods, textiles, and construction. In Thailand, the Indian business community, though smaller, plays a notable role in commerce, with Indian charitable foundations like TATA Trusts partnering with the Thai government to extend healthcare services to rural communities.

The crisis of statelessness: a hidden cost of colonial migration 🔗

Perhaps the most troubling dimension of the Indian diaspora’s history in Southeast Asia is the issue of statelessness – particularly in Malaysia. The lack of birth registration, inadequate documentation, and bureaucratic obstacles rendered many descendants of indentured Tamil workers stateless after independence. These were people who had lived on Malaysian soil for generations but could not prove formal belonging to any nation.

Malaysia’s marginalised South Indian plantation workers became what one scholar described as “orphans of empire” when legislation denied them citizenship rights following independence. Malaysian state actors have at times classified stateless Indians not as rightful residents but as foreigners, deflecting responsibility for their inclusion despite their families having been present in the country since the colonial 19th century.

Malaysia has the third largest reported stateless population in Southeast Asia, with 117,070 stateless people recorded at the end of 2023 according to UNHCR. Stateless individuals are unable to access basic services such as opening bank accounts, holding a driver’s licence, or obtaining telecommunications services – effectively excluded from full participation in society. UNHCR has noted that stateless people face a lifetime of obstacles without access to education, healthcare, employment, and freedom of movement.

Economic contributions and the ASEAN boom 🔗

Despite these challenges, the Indian diaspora has been a significant economic force in the region. Their role became especially pronounced during Southeast Asia’s rapid economic expansion in the late 20th century. South Asian diaspora professionals and companies in IT, finance, and trading play important roles across many countries in the region. As ASEAN economies integrated and globalised, Indian professionals were well-positioned to contribute – particularly in technology and services sectors.

Approximately 2,000 Indian firms operate across multiple ASEAN countries including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam, driven in part by the presence of diaspora networks, bilateral trade agreements, and strong air connectivity. Major Indian corporations like Tata, Wipro, and TCS have established fully-owned subsidiaries and joint ventures across the region, creating employment and boosting investment flows in both directions.

Singapore sits at the apex of this economic relationship. Singapore is India’s sixth largest trade partner overall and its largest trade partner within ASEAN, with bilateral trade reaching US$34.29 billion in 2024-25. Over the last 25 years, Singapore has invested $175 billion in India, accounting for 24% of all FDI inflows into the country. The Indian diaspora is not incidental to this relationship – it actively greases the wheels of this bilateral engagement.

The IT sector and new-wave migration 🔗

Recent trends show that Indian migration to Southeast Asia increasingly includes professionals holding senior positions at local and multinational companies in IT, education, and technology. This new wave is distinct from earlier plantation or trade migration – it is driven by global demand for skilled labour, shaped by agreements like the India-Singapore Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA), signed in 2005 as India’s first such bilateral agreement, which facilitates the movement of professionals and deepens cooperation in education, intellectual property, and science and technology.

Cultural integration and soft power 🔗

Beyond economics, the Indian diaspora has profoundly shaped the cultural fabric of Southeast Asia. Tamil is one of the four official languages of Singapore, and in Malaysia, Tamil is recognised as a minority language – testaments to the community’s enduring linguistic presence. Festivals like Diwali are widely observed across the region, accompanied by traditional ceremonies and performances, while Indian classical dance forms have influenced local dance traditions. Dishes like roti canai in Malaysia have become embedded in everyday national food culture, transcending their Indian origins entirely.

The diaspora also serves as what Prime Minister Modi called a vehicle for soft diplomacy, bridging people-to-people relations in ways that state-level diplomacy alone cannot achieve. Singapore’s Indian diaspora, through a number of cultural societies, actively promotes Indian art forms and maintains regular cultural exchanges with India in performing arts, theatre, museum programmes, and youth engagement.

A complex identity in a changing region 🔗

Diaspora identity in Southeast Asia is rarely simple. Diaspora members have kept their ethnic identity alive through endogamy and through handing down nostalgic homeland memories across generations – yet their experience of “India” is also filtered through the colonial frameworks and legacies of discrimination that shaped their ancestors’ migration. For the professional class in Singapore, identity is layered and cosmopolitan. For descendants of plantation workers in Malaysia, it is bound up with questions of legal status, economic precarity, and political representation.

Even the economic integration of Indian professionals in Singapore is not without friction. Singaporean natives have at times expressed resentment toward foreign Indian workers, with the term “CECA” used as a xenophobic slur – a tension the Singaporean government has stated it will not tolerate. This friction illustrates a broader truth: that diaspora communities occupy contested spaces, valued for their contributions while navigating ongoing questions of acceptance and belonging.

What makes the Indian diaspora in Southeast Asia a compelling sociological case is precisely this tension – between deep historical roots and persistent marginality, between economic success and statelessness, between cultural pride and the daily negotiation of identity in plural societies. The story is still unfolding.

What do you think? Does the economic success of Indian professionals in cities like Singapore overshadow the ongoing struggles of stateless and marginalised Indian communities in the same region? And how should host nations balance national identity policies with the rights of communities whose roots go back generations before those nations even existed?

References

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