{"id":1169,"date":"2026-07-21T21:17:37","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T13:17:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imagined.my\/?p=1169"},"modified":"2026-07-21T21:17:37","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T13:17:37","slug":"petitions-transregional-lives-vs-colonial-categories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/imagined.my\/?p=1169","title":{"rendered":"Petitions: Transregional Lives vs. Colonial Categories"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Research by Loong Dien Min \u2502 Design by Dennis Ong<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Postcard of a farmer with a racialised caption: \u201cBengali Raiyat\u201d. Was this farmer really Bengali?
Source: bnjvintageguitars on Ebay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Puman Singh was a cart driver who worked in Kuala Lumpur in 1910. After he was convicted of a crime, he submitted a petition with the following excerpt:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the arrival of European(s) in this country it may be seen that no Bengali has ever been charged of this offence against another Bengali. It can be, that a Bengali be charged of this offence against a Chinese.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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‘Bullock Cart\u2019, c.1900s, India
Source: James Morley on Flickr<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Bullock cart carrying tree branches in India (c. 1900s)
Source: Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The world of law was not only inhabited by rulers, but also by ordinary people. Petitions are rare windows into the experiences of people often forgotten and omitted from the historical record. From the rickshaw puller to the female coolie, from the migrant miner to the indigenous farmer, everyone was able to tender a petition\u2014as long as you used the language of power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Indian Cooly woman
Source: Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As a result, people who submitted a petition to official authorities made themselves heard through using categories, words and narratives created by people in power. In power-laden situations, this kind of performative conformity helped people survive inequitable treatments, especially newly arrived migrants in a hostile land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Indian migrant workers repairing a road in Penang in the early 20th century
Caption and Source: Dr Richard Leete, \u201cMalaya\u2019s early 20th century population change\u201d, Economic History Malaysia<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Since Puman Singh was illiterate, his \u2018petition\u2019 was taken down orally, transcribed and translated from Gurmukhi to English. This translator was called Duin Chan, whose ethnic origin could not be clearly ascertained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Puman Singh\u2019s translated petition, 1910.
Source: Selangor Secretariat 1196\/1910, Arkib Negara Malaysia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But Puman Singh was not a \u2018Bengali\u2019. This self-characterisation as a \u2018Bengali\u2019 was instead an adoption of racial categorisations unique to the Malayan context, where colonial authorities and the public labelled Sikhs and North Indians like himself as \u2018Bengalis\u2019 only because they sailed from Calcutta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Puman Singh\u2019s records kept in the Pudu Prison, which states he is Sikh, 1910
Source: Selangor Secretariat 1196\/1910, Arkib Negara Malaysia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Up till the threshold of World War II, Calcutta was a principal point of embarkation and disembarkation for Northern Indians travelling by sea between Malaya and India.  It is unclear whether it was Puman Singh or Duin Chan who employed the label of \u2018Bengali\u2019 during the process of crafting the petition. However, this usage\u2014be it voluntary or involuntary\u2014demonstrated that they attempted to use a racialized term familiar to colonial authorities, even if they were aware of its inaccuracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Calcutta port, c. 1890s-1910s
Source: Library of Congress<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At the turn of the twentieth century, laws were an instrument to extend, maintain and reproduce colonial control across European empires. But ordinary migrants like Puman Singh could still secretly disagree or resist, and they did so by artificially buying into colonial terminology of race. While they were not always successful in pursuing their interests, these petitions allowed them to exert their situational agency while offering us a glimpse into the subtle resistances against colonial injustice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A postcard which captures an Indian woman\u2019s silent yet intense gaze at the photographer.  Did she wished to be photographed?
The postcard is captioned: PC Malaysia, Native woman. Date unknown.
Source: postcardsale on Ebay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Further Readings<\/h2><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
    \n
  • James C. Scott. \u2018Behind the Official Story\u2019, in Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. <\/em>New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990: 1-16.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Thomas R. Metcalf. ‘Recruiting Sikhs for Colonial Police and Military’, in Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860-1920<\/em>. <\/em>Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007:102-135.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Anjali Gera Roy. ‘Soldiers, Artisans, Cultivators and Revolutionaries: The Movement of Sikhs in the Indian Ocean,’ Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies <\/em>9, no. 1 (2012).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Research by Loong Dien Min \u2502 Design by Dennis Ong Puman Singh was a cart driver who worked in Kuala Lumpur in 1910. After he was convicted of a crime, he submitted a petition with the following excerpt: Since the arrival of European(s) in this country it may be seen that no Bengali has ever […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":1170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-myunbd"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/imagined.my\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image-37.png",1235,709,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/imagined.my\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image-37-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/imagined.my\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image-37-300x172.png",300,172,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/imagined.my\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image-37-768x441.png",768,441,true],"large":["https:\/\/imagined.my\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image-37-1024x588.png",1024,588,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/imagined.my\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image-37.png",1235,709,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/imagined.my\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image-37.png",1235,709,false],"smart-post-landscape":["https:\/\/imagined.my\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image-37-870x570.png",870,570,true],"smart-post-portrait":["https:\/\/imagined.my\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image-37-600x709.png",600,709,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Amna Account","author_link":"https:\/\/imagined.my\/?author=16"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Research by Loong Dien Min \u2502 Design by Dennis Ong Puman Singh was a cart driver who worked in Kuala Lumpur in 1910. After he was convicted of a crime, he submitted a petition with the following excerpt: Since the arrival of European(s) in this country it may be seen that no Bengali has ever…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imagined.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imagined.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imagined.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imagined.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imagined.my\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1169"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/imagined.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1353,"href":"https:\/\/imagined.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions\/1353"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imagined.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imagined.my\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imagined.my\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imagined.my\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}