Malaysian blogger Adam provokes some thoughts into the subject:

Do Punjabis (an ethnic group of people who originate from the Punjab region of the Indian sub-continent) come under the “Indian” category or under the “others” category.

I once asked this question and provoked a small heated discussion among my friends.

According to some of them, Tamils, Malyalees and Telegu (based on the Indian languages they speak) fall under the Indian category while otheres like the Punjabis (majority Sikhs), Gujaratis, Ceylonese (Sri Lankans), come under the “other” category. Others disagreed and said that everyone from the Indian sub-continent is an Indian. To this day I am not sure what’s correct.

I noticed a few things:

While the tight definition of “Indian” stems from MIC’s past (trying to make sure MIC is a Hindu-majority party, and trying to exclude the Ceylonese middle-class), though today it is more of Ceylonese racism. Apparently we Ceylonese are better than those ulu Tamils. Uh huh…

Furthermore, it is interesting that an increasing amount of Indian Muslims in Malaysia are taking the official identity of “Malay”.