page_title: Hinduism in Southeast Asia
section_title: Malaysia
hierarchical_section_title: Hinduism in Southeast Asia / Malaysia
caption_attribution_description: Taipusam Batu Caves, 2012
context_page_description: Hinduism in Southeast Asia has a profound impact on the region's cultural development and its history. As the Indic scripts were introduced from India and Nepal, people of Southeast Asia entered the historical period by producing their earliest inscriptions around the 1st to 5th century CE. Today, the only practicing Hindus in Southeast Asia other than Overseas Indians are the Balinese and Tenggerese minorities in Indonesia, and the Cham minority in Cambodia and southern Vietnam.
  Hindu civilization also transformed and shaped the social construct and statehood of Southeast Asian regional polity. Through the formation of Indianized kingdoms, small indigenous polities led by petty chieftain were transformed into major kingdoms and empires led by a maharaja with statecraft concept akin to those in India. It gave birth to the former Champa civilisation in southern parts of Central Vietnam, Funan in Cambodia, the Khmer Empire in Indochina, Langkasuka Kingdom and Old Kedah in the Malay Peninsula, the Sriwijayan kingdom on Sumatra, the Medang Kingdom, Singhasari and the Majapahit Empire based in Java, Bali and parts of the Philippine archipelago.
context_section_description: Hinduism is the fourth largest religion in Malaysia. About 2.78 million Malaysian residents (9.3% of the total population) are Hindus, according to 2010 Census of Malaysia.
  Most Malaysian Hindus are settled in western parts of Peninsular Malaysia. Indian Hindus and Buddhists began arriving in Malaysia during the ancient and medieval era. A large number of Hindus from South India were brought to Malaysia by British colonial empire during the 19th and 20th century, as indentured labourers to work on coffee and sugarcane plantations and tin mining; later they were deployed in large numbers, along with Chinese Buddhists, on rubber plantations. The British kangani system of recruitment, designed to reduce labour turnover and enhance labour stability, encouraged Hindu workers to recruit friends and family from India to work in British operations in Malaysia. The kangani system brought numerous Tamil Hindus into Malaysia by early 1900s. By 1950s, about 12.8% of Malaysian population professed to be a Hindu.
  After Malaysia gained its independence from British colonial empire in 1957, it declared its official state religion as Islam and adopted a discriminatory constitution as well as the Sedition Act of 1971 which limited public debate on Malaysia's treatment of religion, language and citizenship policies. In recent decades, there have been increasing reports of religious persecution of Hindus, along with other minority religions, by various state governments of Malaysia and its Sharia courts. Hindu temples built on private property, and built long before Malaysian independence, have been demolished by Malaysian government officials in recent years. Since the 1970s, there has been large scale emigration of Hindus (along with Buddhists and Christians) from Malaysia.
  Malaysian Hindus celebrate Deepavali (festival of lights), Thaipusam (Lord Murugan festival), Pongal (harvest festival) and Navaratri (Durga festival).
caption: Thaipusam festival at Batu Caves Temple in Malaysia. The majority of Malaysian Hindus are Tamils.
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