Sembawang ’s Malayalee Settlement: Fiction, Memoirs, and Literature as Inter-Asian Method

Abstract: In this article, I locate the longer histories of migration of Indian indentured labor to Malaya and Strait settlements through an analysis of Kamaladevi Aravindan’s Sembawang: A Novel (2020). Looking at events around the British naval base, Sembawang sheds light on subregional sentiments over linguistic and cultural uprooting while attempting to respond to questions of belongingness and assimilation. What do such works, and the historical contexts they deal with, tell us about the ways the undercurrents of inter-Asia formations were scaffolded into the discussions on regional identities in estate labor? Furthermore, how might such works supplement our understanding of migrant histories as they reemerge in the contemporary moment of a Singaporean-Malayali diasporic memory boom?